The Anti-Humans

This is what the jews did in Rumania.

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Published in: on December 16, 2010 at 9:42 am  Comments (10)  

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  1. On December 16, 2010 at 9:44 am hoff2 said:

    The Anti-Humans
    STUDENT RE-EDUCATION IN ROMANIAN PRISONS
    by Dumitru Bacu
    (c) 1971, Soldiers of the Cross,
    Englewood, Colorado
    The original Romanian manuscript, under the title,
    Pitesti, Centru de Reeducare Studentesca,
    was published at Madrid in 1963
    IN MEMORIAM –
    Dr. Simionescu
    Serban, Gheorghe
    Gafencu
    Limberea, Paul
    Oprisan, Constantin
    Onac
    et ceterorum
    INTRODUCTION
    I PROLOGUE
    II SIGNS
    III THE BEGINNING
    IV THE PRISONS OF SUCEAVA AND PITESTI
    V HOSPITAL ROOM FOUR
    VI THE COLLAPSE
    VII THE CONDITIONED REFLEXES
    VIII A ROUTINE DAY
    IX THE CATHOLICS
    X THE STAGES
    XI THE DESTRUCTION OF PERSONALITY — “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
    XII THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREPARATION
    XIII VERIFYING THE METHOD
    XIV “PROFITABLE” USE OF TIME
    XV AMPLIFICATION OF THE EXPERIMENT
    XVI THE FIRST RESULTS
    XVII PAUSE FOR ESCALATION?
    XVIII THE ESCALATION
    XIX THE EXTENSION INTO OTHER PRISONS (THE FIRST PHASE)
    XX THE DEMON PERSISTS
    XXI DESPERATE ENDEAVORS
    XXII THE UNLEASHED DOGS
    XXIII THE SECOND PHASE
    XXIV INHUMAN PENALTIES
    XXV THE POWER OF COMPASSION
    XXVI REUNIONS
    XXVII ENDLESS ISOLATION
    XXVIIITHE TRIAL
    XXIX AT JILAVA AS WELL
    XXX A LAST WORD
    POSTSCRIPT
    INDEX
    INTRODUCTION
    by Warren B. Heath
    The author of this book, a Romanian born in Greek territory, went to Romania for his university education and
    there became a member of the anti-Communist organization that flourished in that nation before and during the
    tragic and fratricidal Second World War. After the Bolshevik conquest of Romania, the Soviets, undoubtedly on
    orders from their masters, maintained a pretense that their occupation was merely temporary and further
    disguised their purposes by keeping on the throne as King of Romania the legitimate heir, a young man who
    was merely a puppet in their hands, but served to give to the people an illusive hope that Romania, though
    devastated and impoverished, might again become a free nation. In this hope, of course, the Romanians (like
    many other captive peoples) were encouraged by the governments of the Western nations that had won the
    military victory. Those governments, especially in the United States, maintained a pretense that they were not
    the servants of the Bolsheviks’ masters, and, whenever they deemed it expedient to administer a little verbal
    paregoric to their own population, manufactured oratory about “defending the Free World” and “containing
    Communism. ” Americans, who were so charmed by those phrases that they did not notice what their own
    government was doing, cannot blame the Romanians (or the others) for having supposed that the official
    verbiage was an indication of national policy.
    During the early years of Soviet occupation, therefore, the Romanian people entertained delusive hopes of
    eventual liberation, and the author of this book accordingly remained in Romania, his true fatherland. When he
    was at last arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of holding opinions inimical to Bolshevism, he, luckily,
    suffered only the excruciating tortures and hardships that are normal in what is called a Great Society. During
    his imprisonment, however, he had by chance an opportunity to learn of an experiment conducted on a select
    group of young men, and he had the acumen and patience to discover precisely what that experiment was. In
    this book he discloses for the first time the facts about a practice of which the peoples of the West still know
    nothing.
    Bacu speaks only of what he knows — of what he witnessed with his own eyes and learned from the lips of men
    who had, despite themselves, been stripped of their humanity by an infallible scientific technique. His subject,
    therefore, is what the Bolsheviks secretly did to human beings in the prison at Pitesti[1] from 1949, when the
    experiment began, to 1951, when it seems to have been temporarily discontinued for some reason unknown.
    What is described in these pages is not, however, an isolated event. Everyone who has had experience in
    military intelligence dealing with the Bolsheviks, or who has made a close study of information that is available
    from little known but authentic sources, will recognize in Bacu’s pages a detailed description of a technique that
    the implacable enemies of mankind have used in many lands — perhaps in all countries that are officially
    Communist — for many years. The military intelligence agencies of Western nations have long known that a
    film demonstrating basic Pavlovian procedures was produced in Russia for training the Bolshevik secret police
    in 1928, and that the intelligence service of at least one nation succeeded in obtaining a copy of that film. After
    the notorious “purge” trials in Russia in 1936, when the masters of that country for some reason thought it
    advisable to exhibit to the world their ability to elicit the most incredible confessions from highly-placed and
    hardened Bolsheviks, intelligent observers naturally wondered what means could have been employed to
    produce such amazing results. Certain Western intelligence services sought to ascertain what means had been
    used, and eventually ascertained them in sufficient detail to show that the essentials of the method were
    precisely those that Mr. Bacu has described for us.
    Military intelligence services naturally do not publish what they have learned by their secret and often perilous
    operations. Perhaps the first hint of the new method given to the general public came from George Orwell, who,
    in his 1984, portrayed the internationalists’ Utopia and described some parts of the Communist technique,
    eliminating much that was too realistic for the taste of the reading public at that time, and replacing it with some
    episodes that could give a dramatic touch to what was in reality unspeakably vile and interminably monotonous.
    From 1984, however, an alert reader could have surmised much that was left unsaid. Since then, confirmatory
    evidence has become available from many sources, often fragmentary, for victims who have the stamina to tell
    what was done to them may nevertheless be understandably reticent about the worst aspects of the degradation
    imposed on them. They often censor their reports, to avoid harrowing unendurably the feelings of a humane
    reader or arousing total disbelief in tender-minded individuals from whom miseducation or innate
    sentimentality has concealed the ultimate horrors that lie hidden in creatures anatomically indistinguishable
    from human beings.
    It almost never happens that we have a report from a survivor who at the time observed and interviewed the
    piteous victims of scientific bestiality, but, by a lucky chance, himself escaped the traumatic and
    mind-destroying shock of the torments they had undergone. That is what makes the book here translated from
    the Romanian unique. Bacu, to whom we owe our only authoritative report on the “Pitesti Phenomenon,”[2]
    was such a survivor.
    In these pages, the reader will, for the first time, have at his disposal a fairly complete account of Bolshevik
    techniques of dehumanization, including some details, here mentioned as delicately as possible, of which we do
    not like to think. On these, Bacu does not insist, but you will see their import. One aspect concerning which he
    is silent is the sexual torments that form a standard part of the Bolshevik method. That is a large omission, but
    scholars who have had the fortitude to study the works of the celebrated “Marquis” de Sade[3] and his peers
    will readily perceive what was involved, while a specific report here would not only sicken most readers, but
    would prevent the distribution of this book through the United States mails. [4]
    This account, as I have said, deals with prisons in Romania, but the procedures used there have been and are
    used wherever the anti-humans have gained control. Identical procedures, together with such improvements as
    may have been suggested by their experiments and delights in Romania and other captive nations, will be used
    everywhere that their power is extended — including, of course, the United States, if that nation reaches the goal
    toward which it is presently moving at a vertiginous speed.
    If the Americans succumb, they will remember this book as a prophecy that was completely fulfilled.
    Apart from its value to Americans as foreshadowing things to come — certain to come, if the operations now in
    progress in the United States are carried to a successful conclusion — this book, although not couched in the
    technical terminology of psychology and psychiatry, should be of absorbing interest to everyone who,
    regardless of his political desires or prognostications, is sincerely interested in study of the human
    consciousness. It delineates the result of a crucial experiment that could not have been performed on
    Occidentals outside Soviet territory.
    This book is a landmark in the broad field now generally designated by a term adapted from the Russian,
    psychopolitics. Psychopolitics, a technology rather than a science since it is a practical application of data
    obtained by research in several sciences, may be defined as the art of controlling a nation by controlling the
    minds of the politically dominant majority of its population.
    As a designation, psychopolitics is preferable to psychological warfare, which, though correct, is often taken to
    mean only operations directed against an enemy nation in the course of armed conflict. An excellent example of
    such propaganda attacks is President Wilson’s famous “fourteen points,” a group of fairy-stories about the peace
    and justice that the American Santa Claus had in his bag for good little boys and girls in Europe. [5] That
    high-sounding nonsense, which seemed plausible to persons addicted to idealistic fantasies and romantic fiction,
    is credited with having broken the will of the German people and induced them to surrender in 1918, after
    which, of course, it was easy to inflict on them suffering and starvation, Bolshevik outbreaks, and finally a
    monetary inflation so enormous that the international people then in Germany could “legally” appropriate most
    of the property in Germany that they had not already acquired, “legality” being observed by handing a few
    American dollars to famished and despairing Germans in return for land, buildings, or factories worth a
    thousand or a million times that price.
    The “fourteen points” are justly regarded as one of the great triumphs of psychological warfare, but under
    modern conditions verbal bombardments, unlike artillery fire, cannot be aimed in one direction. Clever as the
    “fourteen points” were, we may legitimately wonder whether they would have made the German populace
    simper, if the populace had not been made susceptible to such gabble by the long and patient work of enemy
    aliens and their hirelings. What is more significant, substantially the same drivel was used, through Wilson and
    other mouthpieces, to pep up the American people and make them glad to furnish cannon fodder and money to
    “make the world safe for democracy” by devastating Europe in a “war to end wars. ” Wilson’s ideological
    barrage was directed against Americans as much as against Germans, and we may wonder which nation, in the
    long run, was the more damaged.
    Under modern conditions, psychological warfare is necessarily waged by a government against its own subjects
    and only secondarily against a foreign country, and the real beneficiary is invariably the international nation that
    controls both sides in the war that it has arranged for its own purposes. Only if we keep that fact in mind can we
    use the term psychological warfare correctly.
    The tactical and strategic use of psychopolitics that the Soviet recommends to its allies and agents in the United
    States and other nations of the West yet uncaptured has been set forth in a remarkable document of which
    several copies appear to have reached the United States in the 1930′s and later. It is most widely known and
    generally available as a booklet, Brain-washing, a Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics, with an
    introduction by the Reverend Mr. Kenneth Goff, who was a member of the Communist Party in the United
    States from 1936 to 1939, and who had studied psychopolitics in a special Communist training school in
    Milwaukee. He states that the textbook, although issued for the use of English-speaking students in Lenin
    University, was also “used in America for the training of Communist cadre. ” An almost identical text was
    obtained from a confidential source in 1955 by a Professor Charles Stickley of New York City and published in
    that year. [6] A quite similar text, with only minor variations, came into the possession of Mr. Louis Zoul, the
    well-known author of Thugs and Communists, who published in The Soviet Inferno the greater part of the text
    divided into short sections, each of which is followed by copious corroboration from many sources, such as
    Anatoli Granovsky’s I Was an NKVD Agent and Captain Robert A. Winston’s The Pentagon Case, as well as
    letters from individuals who escaped from Cuba and other proletarian paradises. [7]
    In the publications before Mr. Zoul’s, the text is preceded by a commendatory address, evidently delivered at
    Lenin University by Lavrentiy Beria, the Jew who was Head Butcher in the Russia satrapy from 1938 — when
    he liquidated another Jew, the unspeakable Yezhov — until 1953, when he was in turn liquidated by another and
    even more ferocious Jew. The date of the oration is not given, but it would seem to be earlier than 1938 and to
    come from the time when Beria, in addition to feeding his blood-lust in Transcaucasia, was presiding over the
    manufacture of “historical studies” for the use of educated simpletons in the United States and elsewhere.
    The “synthesis,” which deals with the uses of psychopolitics rather than techncal details, is obviously a
    condensation and omits most of the Marxist jargon with which admittedly Communist publications for the
    general public are almost invariably larded. [8] It does, however, maintain the pretense, discarded only on the
    very highest levels, that psychological warfare against Western nations is directed from Moscow in the interests
    of Russia, and that the goal is the destruction of “capitalism. ” The text, though candid enough in treating the
    American people as enemies who must be destroyed or enslaved, was evidently designed for students who
    would forget that the Bolshevik capture of Russia was, of course, planned, financed, and directed by the Schiffs,
    Warburgs, and other wealthy Jews then living in the United States who used their control over the governments
    of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the United States to ensure the Bolsheviks’ triumph over the Russians.
    [9] The students were also expected to believe or pretend that “capitalism” included the international lords of
    finance, who have always found their Soviet colony an extremely profitable investment both in itself and as a
    means of exploiting their control over the money and banking of nations that are told that they are “free. ”
    The text of Brain-washing[10] deals primarily with means of inducing insanity or idiocy in selected victims and
    is thus directly relevant to the Pitesti experiment described in the present book. It is not, however, a complete
    treatise, even in outline, of psychopolitics; it barely alludes to very important weapons of psychological warfare.
    We cannot digress to discuss those weapons here, but no one should overlook the efficacy of scientifically
    produced propaganda[11] in the United States, where it is virtually a monopoly of the Jews, who, through
    advertising, can control the ever diminishing number of newspapers, periodicals, and broadcasting stations that
    they do not own outright. The best strategic propaganda is produced by manufacturing impassioned argument
    and violent controversy on “both sides” of a given question, so that the public accepts as unquestionable fact
    everything that both sides” in the contrived controversy seem to take for granted.
    Propaganda, if properly used, can always control a majority of a given population, but will always be ineffective
    against both the critical intelligence of independent minds and the faith of a religion that the propaganda line
    openly contradicts. Although the minds can usually be hired, and theologians can be employed to “modernize”
    the religion, there will always be troublesome exceptions, even after a century of strenuous effort. In the
    conquest of a country by psychopolitics, the exceptions must be put under physical restraint and either
    liquidated or made harmless imbeciles or, if possible, converted into useful zombies.
    This is the problem with which the text of Brain-washing is principally concerned, and with particular reference
    to the United States, where naked terrorism through the government was impossible in the 1930′s, and is not yet
    feasible, even today. The principles expounded in the text and the methods suggested are indisputably authentic:
    they are the standard Soviet application of the discoveries made in Russia, before the Bolshevik conquest, by
    Dr. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, whose scientific talents the shrewd Bolsheviks were able to take over and put to their
    own use. [12] You will find the essentials stated in the text.
    The “synthesis” of the textbook on psychopolitics recommends and prescribes for use against Americans a
    propaganda campaign for “mental health” to obtain from the stupid Americans acquiescence in legislation to
    authorize the “legal” kidnapping of troublesome Americans and their incarceration in prisons (to be called
    “hospitals”) in which “trained psychiatrists” of alien origin and their brutish assistants can induce insanity,
    Imbecility, or, if necessary, death by means of scientific tortures, especially “electric shock therapy” (which can
    be used to break the backbone), or mind-destroying drugs, such as the now famous L. S. D., which was only
    later produced by the Weizmann Laboratories in Israel and shipped to the United States for surreptitious sale to
    adolescents and children whose minds had been given a preliminary conditioning in the public schools.
    In the 1930′s, the “mental health” scheme would doubtless have seemed preposterous and ridiculous to the
    stolid and happy-go-lucky Americans, if they had heard of it. It has now, however, been almost completely
    implemented, and has already been used in a considerable number of cases, a few of which have attracted some
    little attention, especially that of the abduction of General Edwin A. Walker, which failed because he had
    prominent friends who acted before he could be destroyed, of Frank Britton, who had dared to criticize Jews
    and was effectively silenced, and of the journalist, Fred Seelig, who, through a miscalculation, was prematurely
    released and had time to narrate his experience in print before he died. [13] We may expect, however, that the
    procedure will be used with increasing frequency and less secrecy, and that soon it will be mere routine for
    Americans who make themselves obnoxious to their masters (for example, by claiming that the “United
    Nations” or the Federal Reserve System or the Marxist income tax is “un-Constitutional,” or by pretending that
    God’s People do not have a right to use lesser breeds for their own profit and fun) to be hauled to Springfield,
    Missouri, or some other equivalent of Pitesti on the western side of the Atlantic, and there, with “loving care,”
    be restored to “mental health” as vertebrate vegetables.
    Despite the panoply of refined techniques, such as surgical operations on the brain (“lobotomy”), excruciating
    electrical torments, and subtle drugs, it is noteworthy that even in the United States at the present time the
    favored procedure is to subject inconvenient Americans to a kind of physical degradation of the same kind as
    that used at Pitesti, though, for some reason, less intense and systematic. A typical case is that of the American
    journalist, who, having come upon evidence that compromised the nest of homosexual perverts in Washington,
    was kidnapped by a U. S. Marshal and hustled to Springfield, Missouri, where he was stripped and thrust naked
    into a small cell, of which the floor and three sides were of rough concrete, while the fourth was a ponderous
    steel door. There was no furnishing of any kind in the cell, and only two openings, one a round hole in the floor
    leading to a sewer, and the other a ventilator, through which were sent blasts of frigid air alternating with shrill,
    deafening, cacophonous, and rhythmically disoriented “music,” intended both to damage the auditory nerves
    and to make sure that the poor wretch in the cell could not possibly fall asleep as he stretched his naked body on
    the rough concrete. Naturally, the victim’s skin, abraded by the concrete, soon developed open sores, and his
    despairing mind eventually took refuge in periods of total stupor that even the howling din coming through the
    ventilator could not break. After being deprived of food and water for three days and nights, the victim was
    forced to obtain them by crawling on his hands and knees in minimum time to a pot placed on the sill of the
    briefly opened door. [14]
    In the United States it has thus far been necessary to use a certain amount of discretion and pretense in the
    destruction of anti-Communist nuisances, but in Romania, after the completion of the take-over, more effective
    secrecy made precautions less necessary.
    The Pitesti experiment dispensed with such complicated and expensive paraphernalia as electrical apparatus,
    brain surgeons, and specially prepared drugs. It used only the simplest tools, everywhere procurable: clubs, the
    bestiality of degenerates, the weakness of human nature when attacked by Pavlov’s methods. The results of the
    experiment were, as you will see, impressive and appalling. They proved that no one could resist the techniques
    of the Anti-Humans, but whether the experiment was entirely a success is a question that must be left to your
    decision on the basis of your estimate of what the experimenters hoped to discover or prove, while a critique of
    their methodology must be left to the few Occidentals who have expert knowledge of psychobiological
    processes.
    What no reader of this book can fall to perceive, if only for a moment before he tries to forget the
    “unthinkable,” is the unspeakably vile and sadistic lusts of the contrivers of the experiment at Pitesti — appetites
    so foreign to everything that he regards as human that the creatures who are animated by them can be described
    only as the “enemies of mankind,” or, concisely, as the Anti-Humans.
    What is described in this book happened in Romania after the Bolsheviks discarded the pretense that they were
    tender-hearted humanitarians bringing “equality” and “civil rights” to the downtrodden victims of the wicked
    “Fascists” and “anti-Semites. ” Before and even after the Anti-Humans stopped dissembling, some Romanians
    were, by foresight or good luck, able to escape westward, and even to make their sufferings known, as Mr. Bacu
    has done in this book, to peoples not yet imprisoned.
    When the United States has progressed to the point reached by Romania in 1948, there will be no place on earth
    to which Americans can flee, and there will be no one to hear their screams.
    All that remains to be said to introduce Mr. Bacu’s book to American readers can be expressed in a few pages
    giving such information about Romania as will enable Americans to appreciate the human drama — the pathos
    and the tragedy — of this narrative.
    Romania was for centuries, even while it was under the comparatively mild and humane oppression of the
    Moslems, the easternmost land of the West. The nation was born of the Roman conquest of Dacia (101-106),
    and there Rome left an imprint that has thus far been indelible and a spiritual heritage that survives in the heart
    of the people.
    The civilization of Romania was the civilization of the West. The names of men and places may be unfamiliar
    to your eyes, but the people you will recognize as your own kind and their thoughts will be the thoughts of the
    Christian West.
    There is, however, one peculiarity of Romania that requires some preliminary explanation, for it is the very
    opposite of what contemporary experience in the United States — and, for that matter, in most Western nations
    to varying degrees — makes us take for granted.
    The persons whom the Bolshevik beasts selected for dehumanization were a clearly defined group: university
    students. That was because in Romania, in sharp antithesis to what we see in the United States today, university
    students were a highly respected elite and included men who combined the vigor and ardor of youth with
    unsurpassed patriotism and a lucid conservatism, intellectual and religious.
    This fact, which will seem so paradoxical to Americans today, was the result of two concurrent factors.
    Romania was essentially a land of peasants with limited industrial and commercial classes. The four
    universities, at Iasi (founded by Prince Cuza in 1860), Bucharest (founded in 1864), Cluj (1872) and Cernauti
    (1875), each divided into several faculties (theology, philosophy, letters, science, law, and medicine), were open
    to all who had completed their studies in a lyceum (liceu, translated ‘high school’ in the present book). The
    lyceum had relatively high standards, requiring, for example, the learning of French and German as well as
    either Latin and Greek or English and Italian, and weeded out the intellectually incompetent. [15] Only a small
    fraction, therefore, of Romanian youth entered the universities, and consequently a considerable prestige was
    attached to the very word student (i. e. university student, since a pupil in a secondary school was an elev). It
    suggested a considerable intellectual ability and a serious purpose, for the students in Romanian universities
    were, for the most part, the children of hardworking peasants or of earnest professional men; the scions of the
    wealthy more often than not went abroad for their education.
    To this fact we must add a second, that will be even more astonishing to the American reader. The Romanian
    universities were as much centers of ardent patriotism and conservatism as American colleges, in the period of
    1920-50, were centers of internationalism and socialism. The prevailing atmosphere of staunch conservatism
    also distinguished Romanian universities from other European universities. For this there were several reasons.
    Romania was essentially an agrarian country and a large percentage of the studenti had had closer contact with
    the realities of life than was usual in Germany and France. More important, Romania was a small nation with a
    clear consciousness of its national individuality as a Western nation, tracing its origins to the Roman conquest
    of Dacia, and encompassed by peoples of Byzantine, Slavic, or Oriental traditions. It had stubbornly maintained
    that consciousness through centuries of alien domination, attaining a precarious and transient independence in
    1600, only to fall again under the rule of the Turks. After numerous interventions by Russia, the enemy of
    Turkey, and after many episodes of valiant resistance to both Russians and Turks, Romania, formed by the
    union of Wallachia and Moldavia, gained autonomy in 1859, but remained under the suzerainty of the Turkish
    Sultan, and did not become fully and formally independent until 1881. Independence so recently attained and
    constantly threatened remained in the Romanian mind the precious guerdon of nationality at a time when the
    larger nations of Europe were taking themselves and their prosperous perpetuity for granted.
    Romania, moreover, had Russia on its eastern frontier — Russia which, in 1812, had seized and annexed
    Bessarabia, a region containing a large population of Romanian blood. After the International Conspiracy
    captured Russia in 1917, Romanians could not fail to know what the beasts did in Russia and especially in
    Bessarabia. Moreover, it was the Romanian army that in August 1919 occupied Budapest and freed Hungary
    from the unspeakable vermin led by Israel Cohen, alias Bela Kun. The Romanians knew what Bolshevism was,
    and whence it sprang. In the United States, separated from the reality by thousands of miIes and an infected
    press, many stupid or cunning professors could gabble about a “noble experiment” and a “people’s regime,” but
    in Romania such nonsense, so utterly at variance with observed reality, was recognized as either asinine or
    criminal.
    To these considerations must be added another equally important. Although, as was to be expected, Romanian
    universities naturally tended to imitate the far older and venerable universities of the great European powers,
    especially Germany and France, there was a significant difference that limited the more deleterious aspects of
    that influence. The faculties of Romanian universities, especially Iasi and Bucharest, were predominantly
    composed of Romanians, whereas, of course, elsewhere in Europe university teaching had been invaded by
    large contingents of the international people. Before the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the Jews, for the most
    part, had ignored Romania, an impoverished land under Turkish rule, and had by preference swarmed into
    nations where the prospects of easy pickings from the natives were far more attractive. [16] After 1829, hordes
    of Jews came over the borders, but, despite various efforts by France and Germany to procure for these
    intruders in Romania the privileged status they enjoyed elsewhere, Jews were, for all practical purposes,
    debarred from citizenship until 1923, when the Romanian government then in office yielded to the pressures of
    the “great powers. “[17] It thus happened that in Romania, unlike France and Germany, the universities were
    still largely staffed by men who in mind and spirit belonged to the nation, and they were not dominated by an
    alien race whose members can, with the facility of chameleons, take on the color of whatever the environment
    in which they choose to reside. In Romanian universities, therefore, patriotism was intellectually respectable,
    and, on the whole, taken for granted until 1918.
    After 1918, although faculties remained largely Romanian, the situation became confused. Some professors
    seem to have been either bemused by the glib patter of Marxism, a “doctrine” cleverly designed to addle
    mediocre brains that can be fascinated by pseudo-intellectual verbiage, or intimidated by the Bolsheviks’ boast
    that they represent a mysterious but irresistible “wave of the future. ” Many others, perhaps fearing for their
    comfort or lives, concealed their real sentiments and remained silent or took refuge in ambiguous
    pronouncements. A few, however, fearlessly maintained Romanian traditions and asserted their intellectual
    integrity. They provided the inspiration for the patriotic and conservative movements among the university
    students.
    The reaction of the students was doubtless hastened by a simple sociological pressure. The Jews, although they
    were numerically only a small part of the population even after the great influx at the end of the World War,
    swarmed into the universities and began to jostle out the natives. According to the official statistics, for
    example, in the spring semester of 1920 at the University of Cernauti there were enrolled in the College of
    Philosophy 574 Jews and only 174 Romanians; in the College of Law, 547 Jews and 234 Romanians. At the
    University of Iasi 831 Jews were enrolled in the College of Medicine as against 556 Romanians, and in the
    College of Pharmacy, 229 Jews and 97 Romanians. [18] These are, of course, some of the most striking
    disproportions, but everyone will see why, especially in such academic institutions, young Romanians, finding
    themselves a minority amidst a throng of pushing, versipellous, and disputatious aliens, and doubtless also often
    finding themselves eclipsed scholastically by the mental agility and Oriental subtlety of the Protean race, should
    have turned ardently to patriotic movements.
    There was a further development that will be even more astonishing to the American reader. It may be that
    before the First World War in Romania, a largely peasant nation but recently emancipated from Moslem
    control, Christianity retained a greater vigor and commanded a more general piety than in other countries of
    Europe, though it would be difficult to make an accurate comparison between Romania and, for example,
    Brittany, Bavaria, or Piedmont. Romanian universities were, of course, profoundly affected by the intellectual
    climate of the great European universities and necessarily reflected the dominant attitudes of thought, from
    German “idealism” to the “religion of humanity” preached by Auguste Comte in his more lucid intervals; from
    the stern pessimism of Schopenhauer to the graceful and universal irony of Anatole France. To a very large
    extent the intellectual life of Europe was dominated by the attitude that Christianity was an historical
    phenomenon characteristic of an age whose passing one might view with joy, indifference, or regret, but which,
    whether for better or worse, was passing ineluctably away: religion was a waning superstition that still had
    power only over the uneducated. These currents of European thought necessarily affected educated Romanians,
    who, as a matter of course, read and wrote French fluently and, in many cases, German also.
    Romanians will, no doubt, variously estimate the direct effect on their intellectual life of the dire and immediate
    menace of Bolshevism in the period that followed the First World War. Certainly all intelligent Romanians
    could see that their enemies were anti-Christian — were in both word and deed frantic enemies of the Western
    World, whose culture had for fifteen centuries been specifically Christian, and whose nations had been so
    distinctively set apart from others by their religion that they had been little conscious of the underlying racial
    unity of the West. In the 1920′s, it must be remembered, Bolshevik propaganda was stridently anti-Christian,
    denouncing religion as “the opiate of the people,” signalizing its victories by massacring ecclesiastics, defiling
    shrines, and converting churches into stables or warehouses, and teaching militant atheism in its schools. [19] It
    was not until much later that the Bolsheviks could implement on any extensive scale their other and
    complementary technique of utilizing renegade ministers and priests to spread the germs of Bolshevism under
    the guise of a “social gospel” or “ecumenical Christianity. ” Until 1930, at least, the established Christian
    churches were almost universally regarded as a bulwark against the International Conspiracy. Furthermore, in
    1919, the multitude of Jews residing in Romania, deeming a Bolshevik victory imminent, had prematurely and
    indiscreetly dropped their pretense and appeared openly as the instigators of “proletarian” riots and sabotage,
    and the suborners of violence and treason, not troubling to disguise their eager anticipation of a glorious
    butchery that would put the natives in their place. Thus the fundamental and necessary hostility between
    Christianity and the various doctrines of Judaism again made Christianity the symbol of Romanian nationalism
    as opposed to its foreign and domestic enemies.
    In these circumstances, it was only to be expected that Romanian patriotic societies would be specifically
    Christian, but some, I suspect, used Christianity primarily as a symbol of their purpose. The first of the patriotic
    organizations was the Guard of the National Conscience (Garda Constiintei Nationale), founded by Constantin
    Pancu, a simple steelworker whom his fellows elected their leader, primarily to expose the nonsense of the
    “proletarian” propaganda with which the Bolsheviks were trying to confuse and utilize Romanian laborers — for
    the invariable but concealed Bolshevik purpose of ultimately reducing them to brutalized slavery.
    In 1923, the National Christian Defense League (Liga Apararii Nationale Crestine) was founded by one of
    Romania’s most distinguished scholars, A. C. Cuza, Professor of Law in the University of Iasi, with the discreet
    support of the internationally known historian, Prof. Nicolae Iorga, who is, perhaps, best known in the United
    States for his History of the Byzantine Empire, which has appeared in several English editions. [20] A league
    headed by scholars of such eminence naturally had great prestige among university students and educated men
    in general and it became a force of very considerable political importance, particularly after it merged in 1935
    with the political party headed by Octavian Goga, prominent poet, litterateur, and statesman. Although the
    National Christian Defense League sought the support of the sincerely religious, its inner direction was
    rationalistic, basing its avowed hostility to Jews and Bolsheviks on historical and scientific grounds. From all
    that I can learn, Professor Cuza’s creed was essentially the elegant scepticism of Renan. Professor Iorga’s
    historical works treat Christianity with a cold objectivity. And Octavian Goga, if correctly quoted by Jerome
    and Jean Tharaud, seems to have held at heart a view of Christianity similar to that set forth in Nietzsche’s
    famous Genealogy of Morals. [21]
    The greatest influence over the Romanian students at this juncture was undoubtedly exerted by Corneliu Z.
    Codreanu, the son of a teacher in a Moldavian secondary school. Born 13 September, 1899, he prepared himself
    in law at the University of Iasi, where he studied under Professor Cuza, and he later studied abroad in both
    Germany and France. A man of iron will, exalted faith, and ardent patriotism, Codreanu, after participating in
    the Guard of the National Conscience from its inception and in the National Christian Defense League, founded
    on 24 June, 1927 the Legion of Michael the Archangel (Legiunea Archangelului Mihail). The organization’s
    principles — an unlimited love of country, a code of personal honor and moral intransigence, the reciprocal
    loyalty of knighthood, and rigorous subordination of body to spirit — were all based by the founder on an
    absolute faith in Christ. The Legion was “indissolubly united under the aegis of God” and its members pledged
    themselves to sacrifice themselves without limit or reservation for God and Country. This was the movement
    that by its high and noble idealism attracted to itself all the young elite of the Romanian universities, won their
    unqualified allegiance, and largely dominated the thinking of even those who stood aloof or opposed it.
    This is why the Romanian university students were, in contrast to those of other Western nations, profoundly
    Christian. I have been assured by Romanians that in many cases the students’ firm religious convictions were
    shaped not so much by their families or by their churches as by the inspiration of Codreanu and the rigid
    Christian discipline he imposed on all his followers. There can be no doubt but that, from a strictly religious
    point of view, Codreanu’s movement represented the greatest and most intense revival of the Christian faith in
    any nation during the Twentieth Century. Its influence on the spiritual and intellectual life of the elite among
    young Romanians was enormous and transcendent. That is what makes the Legion unique among the nationalist
    movements of our age. The combination of ardent faith and intense nationalism produced a generation of
    heroes. The Legion, also known as the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier), sent an expeditionary force to Spain in 1936
    to combat the international vermin there and earned the enduring gratitude of the Spanish people. And when the
    war with the Soviet began, the members of the Guard, taken from the prisons to which they had been sent by the
    Antonescu dictatorship in an effort to suppress their movement, formed the very flower of the Romanian army
    and were distinguished for their valor and devotion in all the actions of that war.
    This is not the place to summarize, however briefly, the career of Codreanu[22] and the convulsed history of
    Romania after the precipitate and illegal return to that country of Prince Carol, a royal débauché who, after
    many offenses, had been disinherited and exiled by his own father. Carol, accompanied by a Jewish harlot to
    whom he was completely subservient, returned to Romania in 1930, dethroned his own son to reign in his stead,
    and, finding no other way to check the rising political power of the Iron Guard, overthrew the Constitution in
    1938 and made himself dictator of Romania. Codreanu, arrested on patently false charges, was, together with
    thirteen of his lieutenants, taken from prison on the night of 29 November 1938 and, in the early hours of the
    next morning, murdered in the forest of Tancabesti at the orders of the royal degenerate. [23] Carol, with the
    support of the lords of international finance, ruled Romania by a combination of fraud and violence until
    September 1940, when the Iron Guard drove him and his Oriental leman from the country, and restored his son
    to the throne.
    The gruesome murders in the dark forest of Tancabesti that night in November 1938 were one of the fateful and
    decisive events of modern history. King Carol, who gave the orders, himself acted on the orders of his masters,
    the hidden and malevolent powers that, through their puppets in the governments of Great Britain, France, and
    the United States, were relentlessly herding the peoples of the West toward the catastrophic and fatal war that
    Germany was trying so desperately to avert. Carol’s owners were, of course, the powers that had installed the
    Bolsheviks in Russia twenty-one years earlier, and the destruction of the Iron Guard, the only organized and
    formidable anti-Bolshevik force in Romania, left Carol free to carry out (as he did less than two years later) the
    plan to surrender Romania’s fortified border in Bessarabia to the Soviet and thus open to the Communist hordes
    the passes into the Balkans and southeastern Europe.
    King Carol’s commitment to subject Romania to the Soviet as soon as the projected war began was, of course,
    known to the French government and doubtless in other circles even before he gave the orders for the murders
    of Tancabesti, which thus changed the strategic balance of Europe and were a preliminary to the dire and
    appalling disaster that was in fact, as Prince Sturdza has so aptly termed it, the Suicide of Europe. [24] It may
    even have been the decisive turning-point.
    No diplomat and statesman of the Western world was more farsighted and sagacious than Prince Michel
    Sturdza, whose long career as an ambassador in many capitals of the Western world and corresponding contacts
    in the highest circles of many governments gave him excellent sources of information, while his personal
    position during the European disaster enabled him to observe and judge with a dispassionate lucidity that could
    scarcely have been attained by even the intelligence services of the great nations that were destroying one
    another in the interests of their common enemy. Honest historians must therefore accord great weight to Prince
    Sturdza’s conclusion that:
    It was Codreanu’s murder that prompted Hitler to a radical tactical change in his foreign policy — a change
    loaded with the most fateful consequences not only for Germany but for the entire world of Western
    Civilization … Hitler made two speedy decisions: The first was of military character, the occupation of
    Czecho-Slovakia … The second was a bold political decision … he would negotiate an understanding and an
    economic arrangement with Soviet Russia. [25]
    By this estimate, Corneliu Codreanu, although he could not have known or even imagined it, carried with him
    the destiny of generations then living and yet unborn, and the crowned hireling whose hand struck him down
    was, although his clotted mind could not have guessed it, one of the most pernicious traitors of all time. By any
    estimate, Codreanu was a great man.
    The most eloquent attestation of the nobility of Codreanu’s character and the purity of his religious faith is the
    deep veneration for him and loyalty to his memory felt by his surviving followers. Thirty years after his death,
    twenty years and more after failure and the loss of their country, they are exiles in foreign lands and menaced
    even there by the ubiquitous power of the anti-humans and the ever accelerated conquest of the Western world
    by its furtive enemies. But for their Captain and his vision they still feel the devotion that twenty-nine
    Romanian writers express in their contributions to the recent volume, Corneliu Codreanu, prezent.
    The students of Romania, patriots and Christians, were selected by the anti-humans as victims of the process
    described in this book, not so much because they were the objects of the beasts’ most venomous hatred, as
    because they provided material for an experiment that would confirm the universal validity of a technique that
    the world conquerors had elaborated long before and thus far used with uniform success. The anti-humans
    rightly judged that if the courageous and devoted youth of the Iron Guard, exalted by the most ardent Christian
    faith, could not resist the application of a fiendish science, no humans could ever resist.
    That is what makes this narrative so tragic.
    The Legion took its motto from Seneca: “He who is willing to die need never be a slave. ” Aye. But what of
    those who are not permitted to die?
    WARREN B. HEATH
    New York City, 1968
    1)
    With the exceptions of names of places (e. g., Bucharest) and persons (e. g., King Carol) that have
    well-known English forms, Romanian proper names in this volume are given in their Romanian spelling, but
    without the diacritical marks that are used in Romanian. To avoid excessive expense in setting type, the use
    of these marks had to be restricted to actual quotations from Romanian and the index, to which the reader is
    referred for the exact form of names and titles requiring diacritics.
    2)
    [Mr. Heath wrote before the publication, late in 1969, of Dr. Ion Carja's Intoarcerea din Infern: amintirile
    unui detinut din inchisorile Romaniei bolsevizate (Madrid, Editura "Dacia"), a less detailed and explicit book
    in its description of the methods used. -- Editor. ]
    3)
    Donatien Alphonse Sade (1740-1814), to whom we owe the word sadism, was condemned to death by
    French courts for rape, murder by poison, and almost unbelievable torture of persons whom he kidnapped
    for that purpose, but the execution of the sentence was delayed by strange influences until he was liberated
    from prison by the French Revolution, during which he was honored and admired for his orations about
    “equality” and “brotherhood. ” Napoleon had him put in an insane asylum.
    4)
    [Mr. Heath did not anticipate the full effect of decisions by the Supreme Court in Washington. The mails --
    and the newsstands and the public schools -- are now open to every conceivable obscenity that the Jews in
    the United States find it profitable to publish. American publishers would probably enjoy the same
    immunity. -- Editor. ]
    5)
    It is probably true, but irrelevant, that Wilson half-believed himself when he spun his rhetorical fantasies; if
    he did, he was selected for the presidency precisely because he had that capacity for self-intoxication.
    Colonel Curtis B. Dall in his excellent book (F. D. R. , Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1967, p. 137) reports that a
    prominent Jew, who had been an eye-witness and a kind of errand boy for his elders, boasted that in 1912,
    while Wilson was being trained for the presidency, Bernard Baruch, one of the great Jewish satraps stationed
    in the United States, used to lead Wilson about, “like a poodle on a string,” and make him recite at
    Democratic Headquarters, while Baruch’s fellows were egging on Theodore Roosevelt, whose candidacy, of
    course, ensured the popular votes for Wilson needed to make Wilson’s appointment seem “democratic. ” We
    may be sure that Fido Wilson learned how to sit up and speak “new freedom,” “make the world safe for
    democracy,” and the like to the satisfaction of his masters and trainers before they had him perform before
    the footlights for the edification of Americans who imagined that they had selected (elected) him as their
    Leader. What Fido thinks while he responds to his cues and performs on the stage is of interest only to Fido’s
    biographers and to psychologists.
    6)
    Mr. Goff’s booklet is available from Soldiers of the Cross, $1. 00. It is hard to tell which of the many other
    printings are still in print. One, containing an excellent introduction by Eric D. Butler, the well-known
    Australian publicist and editor of the New Times of Melbourne, was published by the Victorian League of
    Rights in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1956, then priced at 4/-. Another, with a foreword discussing the Soviet
    textbook as an obvious source of the “mental health” agitation in the United States, was published at about
    the same time by the American Public Relations Forum, Burbank, California; $1. 00.
    7)
    The Soviet Inferno is published by Public Opinion, P. O. Box 4044, Long Island City, New York; 2nd
    edition, 1967, $2. 00.
    8)
    Marxist doctrine, though very useful for befuddling low-grade minds (which normally accept as profound
    any highly touted mass of intricate verbiage that they are unable to untangle), is believed only by the lowest
    ranks in the Communist hierarchy. As Duane Thorin perceived when he was a prisoner of the Communists
    in China (A Ride to Panmunjon, Chicago, 1956; p. 39): “Intellects that failed to see through the falsities of
    communism were so arrested that they were of only limited use in the totalitarian state. ” Persons with such
    inert minds are, naturally, not promoted to really responsible positions, no matter how hard they work or
    how sadistic they are. The policy of denying them promotion, which is certainly sound from an
    organizational standpoint, has led to some defections — which are of no real consequence, since the dullards
    do not know very much to reveal and they are easily replaced — although, where circumstances make it
    convenient, such tools are usually scrapped and liquidated when they begin to show discontent or claim
    promised rewards — as you will see in Chapter XXVIII of the present book. In the middle echelons of the
    organization, comparable to companygrade and field-grade officers in an army, the ambitious career men,
    naturally too intelligent to take their own propaganda seriously, are careful to use the official “ideology”
    even among themselves, partly for exercise in unremitting hypocrisy, and partly because they find Marxist
    dialectics a game as entertaining as chess. This sport, which may be played for high stakes, gives rise to
    clever syllogisms about “deviationism,” “Stalinism,” etc., which often trap the players. A good example may
    be found in the work of the Soviet physician, J. Landowsky, available in a Spanish translation, Sinfonía en
    rojo mayor (Madrid, 1949), of which one chapter has appeared in English, translated by George Knupffer,
    Red Symphony (London, 1968).
    9)
    Pretense is often dropped on the highest levels in talks with outsiders who are too well informed to be
    deceived. Prince Sturdza, in the authentic text of his memoirs (see the footnote on p. xxxv below) pp. 346 f.,
    reports that when he came to New York in 1929 to obtain a loan for the Romanian government, he had to
    plead his country’s case with the mighty Jewish lawyer who represented the great international banking
    houses of New York that had directed the Bolshevik seizure of Russia. This lawyer, known as Louis
    Marshall (a good Scottish name!), was, as Prince Sturdza says, “a second Bernard Baruch, less conspicuous
    but just as influential as the famous proconsul of Judaism (rather than Jewry) in the United States. ” (A
    proconsul, it will be remembered, was in the Roman Empire a governor sent into conquered territory to
    direct and supervise the native governments, which were allowed some autonomy in local matters that did
    not directly affect the interests of the Empire. ) Marshall, like other great potentates, disdained to play a
    comedy with the suppliant: he took Prince Sturdza to the window, pointed at Wall Street and said with lordly
    bluntness: “Look what we can do for a country we like; in Russia we have show the world what we can do to
    a country and government we hate. ” Prince Sturdza adds, “Mr. Marshall, a few days later, reiterated that
    statement to Mr. Gheorghe Boncescu, the Financial Adviser of our [Romanian] Legation [in Washington]. ”
    Marshall naturally thought it best to profess a liking for the United States, a country which he and his
    fellows were about to afflict with an “economic depression,” neatly arranged by a squeeze through their
    banks, to ruin influential natives, appropriate their property through foreclosures, and create the atmosphere
    of crisis and poverty that would facilitate the “election” of their talented servant, Franklin Roosevelt.
    10)
    The word brain-washing is “an English translation of a Chinese euphemism,” according to an article by
    Professor Revilo P. Oliver in the Birch magazine, American Opinion, November 1964, pp. 29-40. This
    article is an excellent discussion of the whole subject in brief compass, and gives some telling examples of
    tricks used in public schools and newspapers, but unfortunately fails to treat the strictly scientific
    (psychological) principles of propaganda, which can (and indeed must) be used to create “public opinion” in
    modern circumstances. The techniques of propaganda are no more “Communist” than rifles or airplanes; like
    all weapons, they work for whomever uses them, but do not hit the target, if they are not well aimed. In all
    wars, victory goes to the side that has the best weapons and uses them most expertly.
    11)
    The best technical treatises on the subject are in French: Jean Stoetzel, Esquisse d’une theorie des opinions
    (Paris, 1943), and Jacques Ellul, Propagandes (Paris, 1962). One cannot too much emphasize the fact,
    ignored by Professor Oliver and other American writers, that the techniques of propaganda, like the
    technology that makes possible television and computers, have no political or social content. The results that
    are obtained by means of a television station or a computer depend entirely on who uses it for what purpose.
    It is true that all technological advances place the people who are too stupid or lazy to use them at a hopeless
    disadvantage. A nation that neglected or refused to use airplanes, for example, would necessarily be defeated
    in war and disappear (except as a political fiction, if that suited the purpose of the conquerors), but that is not
    the fault of the Wright Brothers and General Sikorsky. The effectiveness of propaganda, in the strict sense of
    that word, depends largely upon what is technically called pre-propaganda, i. e., the ideas injected into the
    minds of children by their education. In the United States, the public schools were early converted into a
    very efficient machine to stunt the minds, pervert the morals, and destroy the self-respect of children, but the
    Americans seem pleased with the results, even after they have had a preliminary view of them in the
    unwashed derelicts, sexual perverts, drug-addicts, and crazed revolutionaries that their public schools are
    systematically producing at their expense. It seems likely, therefore, that the Americans no longer have
    either the intelligence or the will to resist their enemies, and will dumbly acquiesce in the fate prepared for
    them. Since the number of Americans who are still permitted to have liquid capital is very small, the ever
    increasing number of foresighted refugees who are fleeing from the United States to other countries is
    significant, though statistically small.
    12)
    For an account of the way in which this was done, and a transcription of the preliminary negotiations with
    Dr. Pavlov, see Dr. Boris Sokoloff’s authoritative report in his book, The White Nights (New York, 1956),
    especially pp. 66-72.
    13)
    Frederick Seelig, Destroy the Accuser, with a foreword by Westbrook Pegler and a commentary by Dr.
    Revilo P. Oliver (Miami, Florida, Freedom Press, 1967). This book, which I have seen, has become
    unprocurable, and I do not have a copy at hand. The author is said to have died of heart failure in Valparaiso,
    Indiana, not long after his book was published, and a letter to the publisher was returned to me with the
    notation “unknown”! The book, as I remember, contained some details about the eagerness of the staff at
    Springfield to start torturing General Walker, who was kidnapped through the complicity of Federal judges
    (compare Judge Petrescu in Chapter XXVIII of the present book) while the author was a prisoner there.
    14)
    The unfortunate journalist was almost certainly Frederick Seelig, but, for reasons stated in the preceding
    note, I have had to quote from the article in American Opinion, November 1964, p. 31, mentioned above.
    The writer of that article, Professor Oliver, does not give the victim’s name, but the circumstances make the
    identification certain. One wonders how (or why) Oliver’s article was printed in a Birch publication.
    15)
    Romanian children began the formal study of their first foreign language, French, in the year corresponding
    to the fifth grade in American public schools. By the time that they reached the point that corresponds to the
    first year of high school in the United States, Romanian children were reading Cicero in Latin and mastering
    trigonometry. Such progress is, of course, merely normal in serious educational institutions. The public
    schools in the United States, on the other hand, are designed to blight native intelligence and produce a
    nation of nitwits that can be easily manipulated and fleeced by professional “educators” and other shysters.
    16)
    A concise account of this aspect of Romanian history will be found in the opening chapters of L’Envoye de
    l’Archange by the distinguished French authors, Jerome and Jean Tharaud (Paris, 1939).
    17)
    Strictly speaking, Romania, coerced by a scarcely veiled threat of invasion by Germany and Great Britain, in
    1879 repealed the article in her constitution which, like the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania that was
    framed and adopted under the leadership of Benjamin Franklin, restricted citizenship to Christians. After
    1879, the legal privileges of citizenship were available to all Jews, provided that they either (a) had served in
    the armed forces of Romania or (b) applied for such rights and were found on investigation not to be guilty
    of political or moral subversion and corruption. Naturally, only a few thousand thus obtained the legal status
    of citizens, and it was not until 1923 they could all swarm into Romanian politics and begin to take over the
    country “legally” by manipulating greedy politicians. Everyone knows that the Jews are, as they themselves
    frankly boast, an international race or “peopledom” who never become in fact citizens of the nations in
    which they find it profitable to dwell. As Albert Einstein said, “There is no such thing as a German Jew,
    Russian Jew, or American Jew: there are only Jews. ” Hundreds of the most accomplished and intellectually
    prominent Jews throughout the world have frankly said the same thing, and all the admitted Zionists have
    proclaimed it year after year, but, unaccountably, the people of the Christian West perversely refuse to
    believe them — and then secretly complain to one another in private that Jews are not good Christians and
    not good Englishmen or Americans. Although Europeans do understand that a European who lives in China
    is not a Chinaman, most of them have a curious mania to pretend that a Jew who resides in Europe is a
    European — and even a mania to punish other Europeans who will not join in the absurd pretense. The Jews,
    whose leaders have told the truth often enough, can scarcely be blamed for taking advantage of the folly of
    the peoples whom they despise and exploit.
    18)
    These figures are quoted from official sources by Prof. Ion Gavenescul in his Imperativul momentului
    istoric, pp. 67 ff.
    19)
    Hence the cliche, “atheistic Communism,” that is still used in many conservative circles in the United States.
    To recapture the patriotic outlook of the 1920′s, the reader will do well to turn to R. M. Whitney’s
    fundamental Reds in America (New York, 1924), in which accurate analysis of Bolshevik plans (including
    the plans for the “Civil Riots” agitation of the 1960′s) accompanies an implicit confidence that Christian
    Churches will remain Christian!
    20)
    Professor Iorga became Prime Minister of Romania for a time in 1931. An estimate of his conduct in office
    is beyond the scope of this notice. [His History of Romania, translated by Joseph McCabe, was published in
    London in 1925. -- Ed. ]
    21)
    This sufficiently explains why there could be no cooperation between the Christian Defense League and
    Codreanu’s Legion of Michael the Archangel, and it is not necessary to endorse the suspicions of Professor
    Cuza expressed by Ion Mota in an essay, “Legiunea si L. A. N. C. “, in the volume Corneliu Codreanu,
    prezent! (Madrid, 1966).
    22)
    For non-partisan and critical accounts of Codreanu’s career, see Paul Guiraud, Codreanu et la Garde de Fer
    (Paris, 1940), and the distinctly unsympathetic work by the brothers Tharaud, L’Envoye de l’Archange, cited
    above. Brief appreciations by his followers will be found in Vasile Iasinschi’s Facing the Truth (Madrid,
    1966), and in two volumes of essays by various hands, Corneliu Z. Codreanu in perspectiva a douazeci de
    ani (Madrid, 1959) and Corneliu Codreanu, prezent (Madrid, 1966). On the significance of Codreanu and
    his movement in the history of Europe during the climacteric years that ended in what may have been the
    Suicide of the West, see the work of the distinguisbed diplomat and scholar, Prince Sturdza, cited below.
    23)
    The method of the murders was singular and remarkable. The fourteen men were taken in buses to the forest
    and there each of the men, who had been bound in an odd way, was strangled with a rope thrown over his
    head by a gendarme stationed behind him for that purpose. Then, to give some color to the official story that
    Codreanu and his ranking Legionaries had been “killed while trying to escape,” each corpse was shot in the
    back several times before it was thrown into the waiting grave. Prince Sturdza, in the Romanian text of his
    memoirs (Madrid, 1966; pp. 133 f. ), asks the inevitable question: “Let us ask ourselves why there was that
    resort to strangulation, a procedure that was awkward and complicated in the circumstances, instead of a
    bullet in the back of the bead, the simple and usual method and the obvious one to have used, since an hour
    later, to simulate an escape, the lifeless bodies were riddled with bullets. ” (There is the further consideration
    that the bullet, unlike strangulation, would not have left the marks that were detected by autopsy when, after
    the flight of Carol, the bodies were exhumed and the officers who had carried out the murders under orders
    testified what they had done). Prince Sturdza then points out that the elaborate and peculiar way in which the
    victims were strangled corresponds in every detail to the method by which Jews are instructed to kill their
    enemies in a passage of the Talmud that he quotes (p. 134). Needless to say, this part of Prince Sturdza’s
    book, like many others, was omitted in the heavily censored English translation cited in our footnote below.
    24)
    Prince Michel Sturdza wrote his brilliant analysis of the origin of the Second World War in French: La Bête
    sans nom — enquête sur les responsabilités (Copenhagen, 1944). Unfortunately he chose to publish his
    memoirs, which include a comprehensive study of the European catastrophe and are an absolutely
    indispensable source for all serious historians, in Romanian: Romania si sfarsitul Europei — amintiri din
    tara pierduta (Madrid & Rio de Janeiro, 1966). It is a misfortune that the observations of one of the wisest
    and most experienced diplomats of Europe perhaps the only one who witnessed events from a peculiarly
    advantageous position, recorded them with philosophical detachment, and then was free to publish his book
    without being constrained by a need to apologize for himself or for a political party or government at the
    expense of historical truth — were written in a language that so few of our people can read. To make the
    work generally available, a wealthy American hired the John Birch Society to perform the technical work of
    supervising translation and printing and to distribute the book when it was published: The Suicide of Europe
    (Boston, 1968). The choice was unfortunate. The great

  2. On December 16, 2010 at 9:47 am hoff2 said:

    were written in a language that so few of our people can read. To make the
    work generally available, a wealthy American hired the John Birch Society to perform the technical work of
    supervising translation and printing and to distribute the book when it was published: The Suicide of Europe
    (Boston, 1968). The choice was unfortunate. The greater part of Prince Sturdza’s book was accurately and
    even ably translated, although the material was drastically rearranged and often curtailed: for example, the
    concluding paragraphs of Prince Sturdza’s text (p. 323 of the original) were reduced to a few lines and buried
    in a footnote at the bottom of page 23 of the English version. But the text was diligently censored to
    eliminate every statement, direct or indirect, that could offend the Birch Society’s Jewish masters. A great
    many passages of historical importance were “lost” as the contents of the book were shuffled around, and in
    what was left, for example, the word evrei (“Jews”) is almost invariably translated as “some people” or
    “certain individuals,” wherever it could not conveniently be ignored. And, naturally, a long passage was
    interpolated to commend and advertise the Birch business. But even in this mutilated form, The Suicide of
    Europe is a very valuable book and must be recommended to everyone (except the few who can read the
    original) who wishes to understand the age in which we live.
    25)
    The Suicide of Europe, pp. 120-23; in the original, pp. 137 f. These two sudden shifts of policy made it seem
    to the rest of the world that Germany had acted in bad faith at Munich and that even its opposition to the
    Soviet was insincere; that certainly facilitated the work of the international lords who finally forced on the
    West the suicidal war which, as the British historian, H. R. Trevor-Roper candidly admits, “Hitler would
    have done anything to avoid. ” By far the most complete and accurate study of the complicated diplomatic
    manoeuvres and intrigues that were needed to start that war is the carefully documented treatise by Professor
    David L. Hoggan, which, since it has been mysteriously “delayed” by the American publisher who had it set
    in type many years ago, is thus far available only in the German translation: Der erzwungene Krieg
    (Tubingen, 1963). Much less complete, but valuable, are the late Professor Charles Callan Tansill’s Back
    Door to War (Chicago, 1952) and Professor A. J. P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War (New
    York, 1962). The facts are indisputable, but many Americans believe that the devastation of Europe and the
    slaughter of millions of Europeans was admirable because it pleased Jews.
    CHAPTER I
    PROLOGUE
    “One commits crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The line that separates them is not clear. But the Penal
    Code distinguishes between them on the concept of premeditation. We are now living in the era of
    premeditation and perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer those helpless children who plead love as their
    excuse; on the contrary, they are adults and their alibi is an irrefutable one: ‘Philosophy,’ which can be used for
    anything, even for transforming murderers into judges. ”
    These words were written by Albert Camus in the preface of his novel, The Rebel. He, for all his masterly
    discontent, did not know that in a country not too distant from his own France, one engendered and nurtured in
    the spirit of French thought, in fact, Romania, the paroxysm of a whole series of crimes was reached in secrecy
    after August 23, 1944 — crimes of a nature so different and unnatural that neither Camus nor any other
    Westerner could have believed them possible, or even have imagined them.
    An operation to invert and reverse human nature is something that defies the imagination of any normal human
    being. Except for the victims and their torturers, only a few, a very few, persons, who have had the opportunity
    of informing themselves, can give credence to those crimes, and furthermore can understand the deeper
    significance lying beneath the physical facts.
    It is true that the last four decades constitute an era of crime, crime coldly and logically calculated, even
    justified as rational. Such crime now dominates the whole world. It enters into everyday preoccupations. It has
    become something normal, often commonplace. It has come to be accepted as natural, so that people no longer
    take cognizance of it or comprehend the real threat to the very existence of humanity.
    No one can have the patience to compile a list of all the crimes consummated in these four decades, nor could
    he do it in a lifetime. They would have to encompass the civil war in post-Czarist Russia with its forced
    collectivization, the crimes of which have since become well known and recognized as such by the world’s
    leaders. They would have to include the Greek civil war in which the Communists ravaged whole regions; also
    the so-called “People’s Tribunals” that came into being after the war; the bombing of defenseless cities and
    hospitals; the present camps of slavery and death in all countries under Communist control; Budapest in 1956.
    But all these are but a few chapters selected from the long story of unleashed evil. They prove either that man
    has come to feel the necessity to kill as intensely as he has felt the desire to live, or that through a logical
    perversion of a desire to accomplish an ideal he can easily and with scarcely a twinge of conscience be made to
    murder the very persons to whom he once intended to give happiness — destroy them in the conviction that this
    is what he must do, that there is no other way.
    All such crimes have one characteristic in common: they are perpetrated in the name of humanity, the class
    struggle, the liberation of the people, the right of the strongest, all at the discretion of the individual. They all
    have the same goal: the biological destruction of the enemy, a principle applied by Stalin with fanaticism. The
    dead cannot defend themselves, nor can they accuse.
    Such crimes have long been notorious and endlessly repeated. They have become commonplace and trite. But
    there is a deeper horror — one of which the world as yet knows nothing. What happened in the prisons of
    Romania after the nation was subjugated by the Soviets enlarged the domain of crime beyond what people
    believed possible. Crime has been expanded beyond the biological limits and placed on other coordinates and in
    a dimension heretofore unknown. Perpetrated in cold blood and cynically, with sadism never met before, crime
    now aims not to destroy the body, but the soul.
    The biological destruction of an adversary no longer satisfies, or pleases; or maybe it does not pay any more.
    The wrecking of the victim’s mind and soul is more appealing and more useful: the destruction of human
    characteristics; the reduction of man to a level of total animality; a definitive dehumanization that transforms
    what was human into a docile, malleable protoplasm, instinctively responsive to all the trainer’s whims — a
    zombie.
    What is about to be told is, I believe, a unique experience. But it did not spring from fancy, from a brain that
    had passed beyond the threshold of rationality. In order for it to be possible, a distinct evolution was necessary
    on a plane of thought, on a philosophic plane, through a long period of upheavals, of breaking down and
    replacing all values in which man has so far believed. It was necessary that “speculations of pure reason and
    physical determinism converge with human sciences from which man is virtually eliminated. ” (G. Thibau,
    Babel ou le vertige technique)
    What up till now was considered an unassailable truth — that man is a divine creation — has been replaced by a
    desiderate taken as truth that man is a creative divinity. The old values and the concept of man have been
    discarded. In the light of new realities and relationships, the experimenters crystallized the entire materialistic
    harvest of the last centuries into a venom worthy of the concept which spawned it. It was necessary that God be
    dethroned, and that in His stead man be exalted; not an actual man but a hypothetical one, one existing only in
    the imagination of his creators. The divinization of matter resulted in the confusion of man and matter, with
    man’s submission to matter. This last conclusion permitted the experiment to be made without inhibitions.
    When no difference is recognized between a piece of iron subjected to shaping and a man subjected to
    psychological experimentation, the same working methods may be applied both to iron and to man and the same
    desired result will be obtained. By virtue of such reasoning, stripped of all human sentiment, it was possible to
    have toward man the same attitude the sculptor has toward a piece of marble. He carves away to produce from
    amorphous rock a model existing in his imagination. It does not matter if he is not successful — there is plenty
    of marble; and if the treatment applied to man is also unsuccessful, again it does not matter — of men there are
    more than enough.
    One single thing may seem paradoxical — that men have dared treat others of their own kind as though they
    were unlike themselves. Those of whom I shall tell arbitrarily considered themselves different from their fellow
    men and felt justified in subjecting them to unprecedented treatment. They assumed for themselves the role of
    creator but denied this to others, as if the latter were kneaded from a different and inferior matter. This was
    possible because the normal sense of values had become so distorted that even the experimenters themselves
    were not sure but that a deed conforming to the “principle” today would not be declared tomorrow a crime and
    they be punished accordingly. But until then, for them the crime was legal. What is worse, they even proclaimed
    it a salutary act. They gave the torturer an educator’s certificate, and his victim, by virtue of the same contorted
    logic, they accused of being an odious criminal.
    What were the methods used and what were the results of this experimentation in which the fashioning of a new
    kind of man was attempted, a man of whom even the most primitive savages would be ashamed?
    Only the simple facts can tell us. They, above all other considerations, remain irrefutable proof of an era in
    which disdain for the human condition has reached its lowest level, greatly exceeding anything thus far found in
    concentration camps.
    This is a characteristic of the Twentieth Century, and the contribution of Soviet Russia to the history of
    mankind, to the history of the nations she has been subjugating, that of having given, through Communist
    methods, the name to this century: the “Century of Crime. ”
    CHAPTER II
    SIGNS
    It was in 1951 that I had the first indications that something of a very disturbing nature was taking place. This
    was exactly the time at which the experiment reached its paroxysm — in utmost secrecy. It was completely
    unknown to those who remained outside the immediate circle of involvement.
    I had been condemned, and was serving my sentence in the Aiud penitentiary when one morning I was taken by
    two officers and transported to the Securitate[1] in Cluj without being given any reason. My anxiety was only
    natural in a penitentiary regime in which one could never know for certain whether or not his fate had been
    decided. I was particularly disquieted now by the fact that I had engaged in no anti-Communist activity in Cluj:
    I had never been there.
    My first night in Cluj I spent in a vain attempt to adjust to a cell six and a half feet long and two feet wide. The
    second night I was taken out into the searchroom and there I found myself in the company of three other
    prisoners, who had been brought from the prison of Gherla. I knew them. Two were students from Bucharest;
    the third was a worker. Although we had been tried separately, the two students had been engaged in activities
    connected with mine. We were placed in an automobile and taken to the depot. At eleven that night we left for
    Bucharest on a fast express train, guarded by two Securitate officers and a guard-sergeant. Bound in pairs by
    handcuffs, we were kept in a compartment that was unlighted to prevent our being recognized by other
    travelers.
    It was night. Now and then the moon shone through the car window lighting the faces of the three. They were
    strange faces. I had passed through many prisons in Romania; I had met thousands of prisoners, but never had
    my eyes rested on such faces. Beneath the pallor common to all prisoners their faces reflected an exceptional
    physical weakness. And over the emaciated faces a shadow of terror — a fixed expression of terror which
    stemmed from some uncommon experience — gave all three a frightening appearance. When, late in the night,
    the student who was handcuffed to me fell asleep from exhaustion and rested his head on my shoulder, I could
    no longer suppress a reaction to the fear that overcame me; I moved my shoulder to wake him up. His head,
    illuminated by the light of the moon, appeared to be that of the corpse of one who had died surprised by a horror
    so hideous that it had accompanied him into the world beyond. In former times he had been a swimming
    champion and a man of courage.
    Speech among ourselves was strictly forbidden. Every now and then our eyes met, and there I could read the
    same terror that was impressed on their faces — a terror akin to madness. As we passed through Predeal, the
    worker, who sat opposite me, asked me unexpectedly, “Your mother is a small dark-complexioned woman, is
    she not?” His accurate description of my mother surprised me; he had never seen her — for the simple reason
    that she had never been in Romania. [2] I did not answer him.
    Later he spoke to me again, but this time about another matter. “Have we passed Pirinei?” “We are approaching
    Sinaia,” I answered, convinced though that he was not hearing me and that he was present only in body.
    The two students hardly spoke. In the morning we arrived in Bucharest. We were taken into the depot’s police
    office which was an indication that we were to continue our trip. Our escorts left us for a few moments. It was
    then that one of the two, the one shackled to me, began to extol Communism! It seemed that what he had to say
    was directed to the other two, not so much to convince as to demonstrate that he could correctly repeat a learned
    lesson. And he seemed in a hurry to prevent the other two from being first. He uttered the hackneyed
    meaningless words repeated by the Communists on all street corners, but coming from his mouth they took on
    for me a profound significance. I was amazed to hear him speak thus because I knew him well and knew how he
    had felt about Communism. And it was generally true of all prisoners that life in prison tended to strengthen the
    convictions we had held previously. And then he uttered a flagrant lie — claiming that there was decency in the
    officers of the Securitate.
    Again at night we resumed our travel toward Constanta — I recognized the railway line. When the sergeant, a
    farmer from the Apuseni Mountains, asked with some hesitancy, “Do you believe in God?” the same student
    hastened to answer that neither he nor any of his acquaintances had ever believed in God. This statement came
    from one who, I knew well, was educated in the Christian faith. This time again I read terror in his eyes. Again
    he answered with the same haste — as though to prevent a statement from someone else that might be disastrous,
    and his eyes seemed to express the same desire for approval by the other two prisoners. But they only looked
    into emptiness. The sergeant lowered his head. He certainly had expected a different answer.
    “Why were you arrested?” the other student was asked later by one of the Securitate officers. “I was a member
    of a terroristic organization at the Faculty[3] of Letters in Bucharest. I was so fanatical that during the
    interrogation I denounced no one — not even the greatest criminals in the group. ” And then, as if feeling
    embarrassed (or “unmasked” as I was later to learn) he endeavored to correct his statement — “not even the most
    responsible of the group, those who led the secret organization. ” My bewilderment was shared this time also by
    the two officers who, as myself, heard perhaps for the first time from the mouth of a political prisoner such a
    characterization of his own activity. No one could possibly answer my own unspoken questions. The other two
    were still staring into nothingness. How could I suspect at that time everything they had gone through,
    conditioning them to make statements of which, a few minutes earlier, I would not have believed them capable?
    Then we arrived. In the search room, taking advantage of a moment when the guards were not present, I asked
    the oldest, “What position are you going to adopt during the investigation?” “We must confess the whole truth.
    What’s the use of suffering torture now that everything is lost? The Communists have won the game and are on
    the right track. ” I did not listen any further. His answer was a non-sequitur; I was trying to develop a posture
    which would avoid implicating our friends in activities which had been a subject of previous interrogations, and
    which we could anticipate would be again taken up in the forthcoming questioning. But he was broken.
    There followed the isolation, hunger and terror of the unending inquisition. Alone in my cell, completely cut off
    from mankind except for my stone-faced investigators, I began to forget the three. Every now and then the
    officers reminded me of them by reading statements concerning matters of which only they and I had known.
    But my own suffering did not allow me to dwell too long on this; it remained an ominous enigma that troubled
    me from time to time.
    Later on, in the summer of 1952 I again came into contact with individuals who reminded me of the puzzle I
    had partly forgotten. Other prisoners, transferred from the forced labor camps on the Danube-Black Sea Canal,
    brought news that increased my suspicions regarding an entire category of prisoners who had once been most
    dedicated and most faithful defenders of the nation’s freedom — the student body. Accusations were brought
    against them which to the unknowing observer seemed utterly revolting. And yet the men who told me could
    not be lying. For they were speaking from experience, of what they had themselves suffered. The “re-educated
    students,” they said, beat them, denounced them, were spies for the secret police, increased the work norms, and
    tortured any who could not meet them. All these were accusations of an enormous gravity. I wanted to believe
    that because the majority of these men were simple and untutored they erred, making generalizations on the
    basis of their own personal experience, for I had known the students in a totally different light.
    But further news, instead of refuting what I hoped was not true, actually confirmed aspects which entered the
    domain of the tragic. This time it was a student who spoke to me. I had known him in years past at the
    Polytechnical School in Bucharest. At first he would not speak; he was afraid of everyone. But when I told him
    I came to Constanta from Aiud where, up to a few months previously, nothing out of the ordinary had
    happened, he loosened his tongue. It was from him that I found out for the first time about the “unmaskings. ”
    All the students who were at Pitesti passed through these “unmaskings. ” He told me it was impossible for him
    to explain, but that something terrifying took place there. They were tortured in such a manner that all –
    absolutely all — students became informers, so that they were robbed of their manly nature and became simple
    robots in the hands of political officers. They were de-personalized.
    “Who did the torturing?”
    “The ‘re-educated’ ones. ”
    “Who were these ‘re-educated’ ones?”
    “Other students who preceded us in ‘re-education’, in ‘unmasking’ as it is also called. ”
    “Who began that and where?”
    “I know neither for sure, but I believe it to be a general phenomenon in all prisons. And wherever it has not yet
    occurred, it will, sooner or later. It is said that the initiators were three students from Iasi: Turcanu, Titus
    Leonida, and Prisacaru. ”
    He stayed a little longer in our cell, but he avoided talking any more. “If they ever hear I have been talking, I am
    a man sentenced to death,” he whispered as he was taken out of the cell.
    A month later other acquaintances completely verified what had happened in the canal labor compound.
    “Beware of the students as you would of Satan in person, even if they come under a mask of friendship. They
    are perfidious. They have done a lot of evil and some continue in their wrongdoing. ”
    “Why is it that everybody talks thus about students? What happened to them that they became so depraved? For
    you know well that they were not like this before. ”
    “I do not know and I do not want to know what happened to them. I am telling you only that they bite badly –
    on the sly. Beware!” We did not know at that time — and perhaps he is still ignorant of the fact today — that in
    the process of degradation, their souls were killed. They had passed through hell.
    I learned more from another youth who had passed through the Pitesti prison. He talked to me about the
    “unmaskings” in a more precise manner. He mentioned students whom I had known and what they had become
    after they passed through there — dispirited, broken, transformed individuals. But he could not explain through
    what kind of inner crisis he himself had gone in order to reach that stage. The ordeal through which he passed
    was, as he told it, a sequence of tortures truly unique as to length and depth. But what he told me was still
    inadequate to permit me to fathom the depth of the transformation of soul that had to take place to produce such
    results. His fragmentary story brought to my mind another case of several years past which struck me as unique.
    In February of 1951, on our way to Aiud, the group of prisoners, of which I was a member, were lodged in
    transit at Pitesti, where we awaited the prison van in which we were to be transported on the last leg of the trip.
    I was surprised by the thoroughness of the search to which we were subjected there — much more strict than the
    one at Jilava. And Jilava was considered the toughest prison in the whole of Romania. Then followed a rigid
    isolation. I could not see even a single face of another prisoner in the Pitesti prison. Occasionally at night, but
    more often during the day, indistinct groans reached my ears from beyond the wall separating us from the
    prison proper. I attributed them to the usual tortures found in all prisons. On leaving, a young man from this
    prison was added to our group. He was an engineer named Eugen Bolfosu. For the next two days, the time it
    took us to reach Aiud, he spoke but rarely and then only in monosyllabic answers to my questions. But on his
    face was imprinted the same terror I later read on the faces of my travelling companions from Cluj. Having
    arrived at Aiud, during the search the engineer was asked from whence he came. When he uttered the word
    “Pitesti”, he was immediately isolated for several days. Later he was taken out, and I met him in the prison
    shop. He would riot tell me the reason for his isolation. The Aiud political officers knew what was happening in
    Pitesti, and the engineer dared not talk lest he suffer the consequences. Or perhaps he was at that time a simple
    robot who acted only at the command of the “politruks. “[4]
    I asked the young man who had passed through Pitesti if he had met engineer Bolfosu previously. He told me
    they had gone through the “unmaskings” together and that he also had been sent to Aiud a little later, but that
    before leaving Pitesti they were specifically warned by the prison director not to talk. An indiscretion could cost
    them a return to Pitesti — if unmaskings were not to be started at Aiud as well — and thus a new passing through
    the awful ordeal. Who could disregard that threat without his flesh trembling?
    My detention in the cellars of the Securitate of Constanta ended in May 1953. Following twenty months of
    inquisition I was sent to the Gherla prison to continue serving my sentence. I arrived there on the morning of
    May 6. I was immediately isolated, but in an hour or two another prisoner was introduced into the cell. He
    arrived from Bucharest, where he had been taken for a supplementary investigation, from Gherla, a month
    earlier. We knew each other. He asked me:
    “Have you been here before?”
    “No, this is my first time. ”
    “Beware of the students as you would of Satan. If you do not, you shall experience very unpleasant surprises.
    And moreover, you will suffer much needlessly. ”
    “Why, sir, is this the case? What have the students done, or rather, what has been done to them that they have
    reached such a state? You are not the first person to warn me. ”
    “Personally I cannot explain it to you. Something has happened to them which for me is inexplicable. And I
    certainly know them, for it has not been long since I was a student myself. I simply cannot understand the
    nature of the profound transformations which were forcibly induced. I do know they were tortured; yet torture
    alone cannot account for their behavior. All of us have passed through the hands of the Securitate and, after
    some more or less serious lapses, we recovered. But the students persist on an infernal path. It is said they went
    through ‘unmaskings’. What the ‘unmasking’ consisted of, only time and perhaps the recovery of some students
    could explain to us. But I am wary, and that is why I advise prudence. ”
    After fifteen days of quarantine, I was taken to the prison’s shop for work. They put me on the night shift from
    six in the evening till six in the morning. The first prisoner I met there, or rather, to whom I was introduced by a
    supervisor, was a former student of philosophy. After he asked me the reasons for my condemnation and my
    place of origin — inevitable inquiries addressed to all newcomers in any prison — he told me with an impassive
    voice, while he avoided looking at me, “Beware of me! I am a student. And this ought to tell you much. Beware
    not only of me but of all students, especially of those who are your friends. They can hurt you much more
    because you cannot perceive behind the mask each of us wears the vast abyss that now separates us from what
    we were not too long ago or what we wanted to be. ”
    Here, then, was one of them, one of those “unmasked”, who put me on guard against himself as well as against
    others like him or possibly worse. But for him to have done this, there must have yet existed in his soul a
    vestige of dignity and courage. Did he succeed in his comeback? Did he escape the catastrophe without a
    definitive mutilation? This was a puzzle which I was only later to unravel.
    “Why do you warn me? I have nothing to hide. I serve a sentence for the attitude I adopted against the regime.
    What importance may details have? And why do you sound a warning even against yourself?”
    “Because, if the ‘unmaskings’ are going to be repeated, I will not be able to keep quiet upon questioning, and I
    am afraid that you would talk before I do. An unconfessed detail can cost one his life. For by now we have been
    brought to the point of fearing for our lives. We have become more cowardly than you can imagine. ”
    I was afraid to pursue the discussion any further. Who could tell me that this was not a subtle trap set for me
    into which I might let myself fall, the more easily deceived by his frankness? I let the passing of time bring the
    facts to light. But with this student I made friends rather quickly. Shortly afterwards the ice thawed completely,
    opening up an exchange of communications without reservation. It was from him that I obtained the first
    elements of an explanation. For he was, in spite of his youth, a thinker possessing a rare power of analysis.
    What happened there at Pitesti could not be described in simple terms. In this, as in many other instances,
    language is inadequate to express all we want to say. For this reason we often have the impression that
    something is missing from the whole story. This void can be filled only by the voice of our own soul as we try
    to live in our imagination what others have lived through in reality.
    It is a profound drama touching the most delicate fibers of the human spirit, having origins that transcend the
    material manifestations of the everyday conflict. Little by little this drama became my overwhelming
    preoccupation. During the three years I remained in prison and for two more after my release, until 1959, my
    preoccupation was to penetrate as deeply as possible into the secrets of this phenomenon in order to
    comprehend it. Investigating discreetly, gathering even the tiniest admissions and hints, listening to the
    revelations of those who had been victims, only to become torturers themselves later on, I came to comprehend
    the tragedy that had been consummated within the prison walls of Romania, and to understand how a
    psychological experiment, as novel as it was criminal and degrading, could, over a period of time transform
    humanity into inhumanity. Several scores of students with whom I discussed what happened to them and whose
    confessions of their own experiences and personal ruin I heard, provided me with the basic information. The
    present work is a composite picture of their tragedy. It has been written to call attention to the “Pitesti
    Phenomenon,” but is by no means an effort to exhaust the subject.
    As incomplete as it is — for the magnitude of the subject exceeds the powers of any single individual — I bring
    this book as a witness to my brothers in exile so they may more clearly visualize the hell unleashed over their
    fatherland and over all the countries engulfed by the Soviet Empire. What happened in Romania could have
    happened — probably did happen — in every other captive country, the authors and perpetrators of the terrors
    being one and the same people in all lands.
    This is a testimony from behind the curtain, from beyond the tomb. I leave to the victims the right to judge.
    1)
    The Bolshevik Secret Police in Romania took over the name of the Security Service of Free Romania.
    (Translator’s Note)
    2)
    Bacu lived in Macedonia, where he was born and received his secondary education, going to Romania when
    he entered the University of Bucharest. (Tr. )
    3)
    European universities are composed of faculties, which correspond roughly to the colleges of American
    universities. The Faculty of Letters dealt with the classical and modern languages and literatures and the other
    studies commonly called the Humanities. (Tr. )
    4)Political bosses in a Communist regime. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER III
    THE BEGINNING
    The inauguration of the Communist regime in Romania was the result of historical circumstances in which the
    Romanian people undoubtedly played the least important role. Whether it was short-sightedness or self-interest
    that caused Communism’s advent in Romania, has now become a question for history to answer; to search today
    for the determinants of this tragedy is perhaps useless, or in any event merely academic. One fact, however, is
    certain. The Romanians not only did not want such a regime, they did not even dream that something like it was
    possible, because — perhaps as in no other European country — no Communist Party had existed in pre-war
    Romania, not even a Communist problem. The clandestine Communist organization, according to both its boss
    and the files of the police, had a total of 820 members — and almost half of those were agents of the state police!
    I met many of them in prisons, sentenced after 1945 for “crimes against humanity”!
    The surprise which benumbed the nation at first, later gave way to anxiety. The public in its entirety reacted
    from the start against Communist violence, which was initially supported by the short-sightedness of political
    parties and adventurers, but later on only by the Soviet battalions and secret police.
    The downfall of the monarchy on Dec. 30, 1947 marked the starting point; it was the signal for a Communist
    offensive on all fronts to destroy the foundations of the nation and replace them with Soviet tyranny. This new
    state of affairs compelled the Romanian citizen to choose between two alternatives; one being collaboration
    with the Communists, offering honors, a life free from want, and high position; the other carrying the risk of
    joblessness, incarceration in the cellars of the Securitate, or even loss of life itself.
    Instinctively or deliberately, the great majority chose the second, even though they could not influence the
    course of events in their favor. The fight was so tragically unequal. On the one side we have the live organism
    of Communism, perfectly disciplined, with strategy perfected over three decades of subjugating the Russian
    people. This force was small in number, to be sure, but the stakes were high, and knowing the risks, it was not
    disposed to make any concessions that might weaken its position as victor or “jeopardize its legal status. ” It
    was in fact a foreign body determined to embed its fangs in the arteries of the Romanian nation.
    On the other side of the conflict we have an organically unblended community, discouraged by the loss of a
    war, with the feeling of an unjust defeat yet in its heart, and aware that it had been left to make the best of things
    by its own means — the attitude of the Westerners being more than manifestly one of disinterest in what
    happened in Romania. In view of this unfavorable attitude of the Western powers, and because of a lack of
    leadership to channel its efforts toward a possible and advantageous solution, a mass reaction was impossible.
    To this, one could also add not too small a dose of naivete, especially among politicians, who many times
    believed the opposite of the obvious. They believed, for example, that the Communist occupation and the
    imposed regime were but transitory stages and that sooner or later everything was going to revert to normal,
    without the slightest effort on their part. While the people’s zeal was being wasted in fruitless effort, the
    Communist Party was winning victory after victory, and the politicians were making deals behind-the-scenes or
    forming tentative governments in anticipation of the arrival of — the Americans!
    In the face of the new events, one observed a change in the make-up of the populace. To the ranks of several
    hundred Communist conspirators and their international brethren was gradually added a stratum of individuals
    of uncertain background, in large part roustabouts and creatures from the more degraded and contemptible
    sectors of humanity. To these were added in quite large numbers members of the minority groups who were
    now installed in government jobs, most of the time without having the slightest competence. Contrary to the
    professed principles of “class struggle,” the Communists that were brought in from the Soviet Union (Ana
    Pauker, Bodnarenco, Chisinevski, Tescovici, Moscovici, et al.,) encouraged ethnical dissension and the
    centrifugal tendencies of national minorities, thus arousing and exploiting strongly anti-Romanian sentiments
    by favoring non-Romanians for admission into Party membership and appointment to low-echelon
    administrative positions.
    On the “counter-revolutionary” front stood the flower of the Romanian nation, with the front ranks occupied by
    students and young intellectuals, mostly of peasant or middle-class origin. The young people had been
    anti-Communist for years prior to the direct confrontation with the invaders — for the Russians have always
    been looked upon as such — possibly because of the national instinct, or their education, or a natural pride. The
    reasons for this anti-Communist posture are as various as are the forms taken throughout the whole
    anti-Communist struggle.
    Confronted by this situation, the Communists adopted measures which they deemed appropriate. Completely
    disregarding all principles of social ethics, human decency, and the Peace Treaty of Paris, which supposedly
    guaranteed freedom of speech, they unleashed a wave of arrests. Every social stratum of Romania contributed
    its share of victims, but the hardest hit were the students. How many of them passed under the “protection” of
    the police, one cannot tell. From 1948, then, until the present time, violent repression of discontent has
    continued, its intensity depending on the perspicacity of the Securitate’s informers or on increase or decrease of
    the people’s resignation to their fate. For manner and magnitude, the arrests of the night of May 14/15, 1948
    remain memorable. For on that one night, in the three most important university centers (Bucharest, Iasi and
    Cluj) no fewer than 1,000 students were arrested. This figure represents about 2% of all students at the time.
    The methods of torture most commonly used by the Communist Secret Police were freely applied in the
    interrogation of prisoners. For months, the military tribunals pronounced sentences prepared by the Ministry of
    the Interior in advance of the “trials”, either behind closed doors or in public for the benefit of journalists and
    Party activists. Sentences ranged from hard labor for life down to five years’ imprisonment. Sentences of only
    two or three years were extremely rare and given only where there was no evidence at all against the accused.
    Using a method long practiced in the U. S. S. R., that of segregating prisoners according to their professional
    background and intellectual capacity, the Communists in Romania grouped the students in a category apart from
    the others, and designated as their place for detention the prison at Pitesti. This measure served another purpose,
    also — that of preventing them from exercising their influence (which was considerable) over the great number
    of peasants and workers who continually swelled the ranks of political prisoners. The influence of the students
    in Romanian society after the Second World War was as great as it had been before the war.
    One single fact is worthy of note here. Among the large numbers of arrested students, hardly any were of
    minority origin! The “class struggle” theory here was undeniably violated. According to the theory, of course,
    the enemies of Communism would have included large numbers of the foreign ethnic groups that enjoyed a
    favored economic position prior to the takeover and had presumably suffered correspondingly great economic
    losses with the liquidation of “capitalism. ”
    Also it is worth noting that, just as the wealthy resident aliens had aroused no apprehension in the Communist
    rulers, so the sons of rich Romanians were conspicuously lacking among the students arrested. The basis for this
    remarkable discrimination may lie in a conflict between two worlds based on motives entirely other than those
    taught in Communist classes in Marxism-Leninism and in the “history” of the Party and the working-class.
    During the trials, sometimes relatives of the accused were permitted to see him once more, but after sentence
    was pronounced, the doors were locked behind him, and tight secrecy deprived the family of all news of him,
    until he was released — if ever he was. Oftentimes prisoners had been dead for years while the family waited
    and waited at home for news, hoping that after 10 or 20 years they might be re-united with the loved one who
    had disappeared. It was to be expected that such rigorous secrecy would prevent leakage outside the prison
    walls of any report or even rumor of the crimes committed within.
    CHAPTER IV
    THE PRISONS OF SUCEAVA AND PITESTI
    When the wholesale arrests of students began, the Moldavian region was one of the hardest hit. Since the
    university in Iasi, Moldavia’s capital, had for a long time been a major center of all student movements of
    nationalistic character, an extremely large number of students in the Faculties of Letters, Law, and Medicine of
    that university were immediately seized and confined. The former Suceava Fort outside the town was used as
    the place of temporary imprisonment for these students, inasmuch as both the Securitate’s investigating offices
    and the trial chambers were within the fort, so the prisoners could be produced at a moment’s notice by the
    penitentiary officials. Living conditions in the fort (later transformed into a disciplinary prison) were considered
    among the most severe of all the prisons of Romania, excepting perhaps only Jilava. To the inhuman treatment
    and indescribable sanitary conditions (the fort is permanently humid and without sunlight for most of the day)
    was added psychological terror produced by the presence of inquisitors who were notorious for their sadism and
    their cruelty in torturing prisoners. One of these officers was the Commissar Pompilian, whom the Communists
    had inherited from the old regime; another was a certain Fischer from somewhere in the vicinity of Iasi, where
    he had been a small shopkeeper until he was transformed into a police officer overnight.
    Ostensibly for administrative reasons, but in reality to prepare for the coming experiment, the Moldavian
    students were kept in this fort for quite some time, even after their trials, and were only later transported to
    Pitesti.
    Among them must be mentioned one, Turcanu, a student of law originally from around Radauti, who from the
    very first played the leading role in the tragedy. Turcanu had been a member of the Communist Party in Iasi;
    after his record had been verified by the Soviet occupation of Romania, he was assigned to lead a “voluntary”
    team, part of an “international working brigade”, on a railway construction project in Bulgaria. After completing
    this probationary work to the satisfaction of his masters, he was sent to a school of Communist diplomacy and
    destined for a diplomatic post abroad. Then, ostensibly, his brilliant prospects were shattered by a sudden arrest.
    The reasons for his trial and subsequent imprisonment at Suceava are obscure. While a high school student, he
    knew that some of his classmates were members of an anti-Communist organization, with which, it was said, he
    had sympathized or even associated himself.
    Later at college he continued to maintain friendly relations with those former classmates in high school who
    were now his fellow students in Iasi, and were continuing clandestinely their fight against Communism.
    Whether Turcanu came to the university as a Communist or joined the apparatus there, his superiors must have
    known at the time that he was maintaining his acquaintance with the unsuspecting anti-Communists, but that
    fact was “discovered” while the Communists were preparing him for a diplomatic career and provided the legal
    pretext for a formal trial at which Turcanu was sentenced to seven years in correctional prison for “conspiracy. ”
    The real reason for sending him to prison was a subtle one. He was considered by the Communists to be
    sufficiently reliable to become their principal instrument in the initial phases of their experiment.
    It is significant that both before the beginning of “political re-education” at Suceava as well as throughout the
    experiment, Turcanu kept in direct and constant touch with individuals who were not members of the
    Securitate’s inquisitorial staff at the prisons. These individuals, who usually came from the Ministry of the
    Interior in Bucharest, must have been of superior rank to those stationed in the prisons.
    From his first days in the prison, Turcanu began to apply a plan previously formulated by the officers of the
    Securitate, who were themselves no more than instruments in the hands of their masters.
    The initial phase of the plan consisted of a campaign of so-called “re-education” of the students — a process
    calculated to “integrate” the students into the Communist society; in other words, forced political indoctrination.
    From the beginning, Turcanu had as close collaborator the college student Titus Leonida, also from the northern
    part of Moldavia, as well as another youth, Bogdanovici, who had been still in high school.
    The first step was the completion of statistical tables showing the origin of those imprisoned at Suceava, their
    property, education, political affiliations, and other items of personal information. The purpose of these
    statistics was to show that the great majority of students were merely victims of the bourgeois reactionary
    education and that, considering their social status, or “social class” as Communists say, their place was not in
    the ranks of those opposing “Socialism” but, on the contrary, alongside the Communists. If for reasons of
    opportunism, some peasants went along at the beginning of this indoctrination, the great majority of the
    university students reacted against the “re-education” propaganda with so firm a rejection that no doubt was left
    in the minds of the “teachers” that such methods were futile. Neither promises of liberation from prison as a
    reward for “re-education”, nor promises that they would be given holdings from the land that had been taken for
    distribution to the peasants could shake the convictions of the prisoners. They knew the realities of Communist
    rule too well to degrade themselves by playing in such a farce.
    To the lectures based on Communist pamphlets which political officers placed at the disposal of Turcanu and
    his accomplices, the students responded with ridicule and mockery. The Communist songs in “meetings of
    political re-education” were turned into improvised parodies so clever and devastating that after a time the
    political officers forbade Turcanu to allow singing at all.
    Practically speaking, the “re-education” period at Suceava ended in failure, and Turcanu’s activity was
    suspended when the prisoners were at last transferred from Suceava. That preliminary phase had been designed
    simply to test the “fanaticism” of those who were thus selected for the real experiment that was to begin at
    Pitesti.
    Since they came from the same region, many of the students at Suceava had been acquainted even before they
    entered the university and most of them knew one another, so contacts were easily kept. At Pitesti, however,
    they were mingled with hundreds of students from all the other universities of Romania.
    The various groups thus assembled at Pitesti were of quite diverse social backgrounds and political principles.
    The great majority of them were either Legionaries,[1] or members of the National Peasant Party; a few were
    members of the Liberal Party, and there were several groups united only by their loyalty to the monarchy. There
    was also a goodly number of small groups, lacking a clearly stated political position — the so-called
    “mushroom” organizations — likened to the growth of mushrooms following a rain. The proliferation of such
    groups was a consequence of the climate created by the Communist Party itself. These groups also differed
    among themselves in the degree of their dedication to the anti-Communist cause — the criterion, incidentally, by
    which the “dangerousness” of the accused was judged, and the basis on which the Communist Securitate
    determined his punishment. Thus it was possible that for one and the same offense the sentence could be five, or
    twenty-five, years, depending upon the investigating officer’s own estimate of the degree of the victim’s
    “fanaticism. ”
    The regimen of detention at Pitesti was very severe. In the world outside the prison nothing was known of what
    was taking place within the walls. The Communists brazenly called the Pitesti prison “The Center for Student
    Re-education,” a clever title which actually did tell the truth, but ambiguously, the man in the street
    understanding one thing by “re-education,” and those who were implementing it, another. Rumors whose origin
    could not be traced, but which certainly emanated from the Ministry of the Interior, were designed to create the
    impression that the lives of students were not endangered; that on the contrary, truly humane conditions were
    created for them; that in addition to decent food, they had at their disposal lecture halls, movies, courses of
    professional readjustment, entertainment, and other privileges. Since there were no other sources of
    information, people somehow began to believe these rumors, particularly the parents of the prisoners who
    hoped against hope that they might soon see their sons again; but this hope was illusory.
    The prison at Pitesti was relatively new as compared to other prisons in Romania. Built by King Carol’s regime,
    it was meant to shelter dangerous common criminals. Transformed into a political prison by Antonescu in 1941,
    it reverted to its original purpose after 1944. In 1947-48[2] it was used for the first time by Communists as an
    internment center for the National-Peasant Congressmen arrested for their anti-Communist attitude in
    Parliament. A little later it was called the “Center for Student Re-education,” under which name it was operated
    until 1951.
    Situated to the northwest, outside the town limits, close to a small river and far from any dwelling, it was a
    location almost ideal for torture, since no scream from within its walls could be heard by outsiders.
    In this “Center,” ideal for experimentation, were brought together all students arrested up to the fall of 1948.
    They were divided into four categories according to the classifications given when sentenced.
    Category I consisted of students “retained” without even a pretense of legality, on the simple basis of their
    political sympathies; for lack of proof of any offenses they could not be convicted of anything. This did not
    prevent, however, their imprisonment for as much as six or seven years!
    Category II consisted of those sentenced to “correctional” prison terms for minor offenses: sheltering persons
    suspected of anti-Communist sentiments, or failure to denounce them; favoritism, membership in the
    Communist Party without activity on its behalf, or simply suspicion based on some reported statement! Most of
    these had no political orientation and were victims of their own refractoriness, of special circumstances, or of
    the “subversive” organizations fabricated by the Ministry of the Interior to keep its spies and agents busy and to
    force the Communist cadres to be perpetually vigilant for signs and dissatisfaction or “deviationism. ” The
    sentences of those in this category varied from three to five years of “correctional” imprisonment.
    Category III consisted of individuals condemned, with some legal justification, for offenses classified as
    “plotting against the social order. ” These received sentences of from eight to fifteen years of imprisonment
    under a severe regimen. The greatest number of students fell into this category, which contained those whose
    activity was discovered but not in all cases confessed.
    Those in category IV were sentenced to from ten to twenty-five years hard labor. They were fewer than in
    category III. Here one found group leaders, men who had been charged with special assignments, individuals of
    the student world having an unusual influence over those around them, and members of groups that were
    thought to be prepared for armed resistance.
    In theory, this was the classification according to the gravity of the offense that is practiced in prisons all over
    the world. But in practice, this classification and segregation served to isolate the categories from one another,
    isolating the less “contaminated” from the “fanatics. ” Thus separated, the “minor” categories, deprived of their
    former leaders, were less able to resist the pressures to which they were subjected. This was especially true in
    the second category, which contained a large number of unstable individuals who were somehow predisposed to
    submit more or less easily or, at worst, to offer less resistance.
    Until the beginning of 1949, prisoners in the first three categories were allowed to correspond with their
    families. once a month they were permitted to write and receive a few censored lines and a food package of
    three to five kilograms according to their category. Those in category IV were excluded from both privileges.
    The food given prisoners was very poor. While a minimum of 1800 calories was officially specified by the
    administration, the food actually given to students, as to all other prisoners in Communist Romania, was
    normally limited to 700-800 calories, although on very rare occasions as much as 1000 was given. Within a few
    weeks following arrest, the effects of this substandard diet, aggravated by punishments inflicted mercilessly,
    could be seen very clearly. All, especially the sick, became so physically weak that, when not coerced, they
    would commonly spend hours on end in almost total immobility to avoid using energy. Thus, for those fortunate
    enough to receive them, packages of food from the outside were the most precious of gifts.
    Medical assistance in the prison was practically nonexistent. It was limited either to dispensing an aspirin,
    irrespective of the ailment, or to strychnine shots for those whose nerves were shattered, a mere token treatment,
    and usually the number of injections was limited to from two to four.
    During this preliminary period, the prisoners of the first three categories, who could receive monthly packages
    of food from their families, devised an ingenious system to help the prisoners of the fourth category, who,
    sentenced to hard labor, were denied all communication with the outside. The latter were incarcerated on the top
    floor of the building. Thus the prisoners below, by having a rope lowered from the windows above, could send
    up small quantities of food, especially to the sick and infirm. This was done, however, at great risk, for those
    caught were sent to “cazinca” — a special room in the prison’s cellar full of dirt, with walls permanently dripping
    with moisture. The prisoner was stripped down to a minimum of clothing and left without food for a period of
    time that depended on the whims of the warden or political officer and which usually was in direct proportion to
    the degree of “fanaticism” of the prisoner. And as the “cazinca” never lacked for prisoners, an increase in the
    number of tuberculosis cases was soon observed.
    It was under these conditions that the Ministry of the Interior, after the preliminaries were judged adequate,
    decided to begin the real experiment. Food packages and correspondence with the outside were permanently
    discontinued. The guards’ terrorism increased in intensity. Torturings in the prison basement increased in
    frequency, oftentimes for reasons patently trumped up. Threats, with mysterious meanings implied, frequent
    visits of the warden and political officers to the cells, unexpected searches at all hours of day and night, and
    prohibition of every kind of activity under stiff penalty, were signs of fast-approaching changes.
    The group from Suceava, accompanied by Turcanu, had recently arrived at Pitesti. Within the small circle of
    advocates of “re-education” at Suceava, a schism had occurred. Bogdanovici — son of the prefect of Iasi County
    who had threatened to disclaim him and deprive him of his name if he refused re-education — continued to
    champion a system of re-education by persuasion, limited to Communist ideological lectures and study of
    printed brochures supplied by the prison administration. He later confessed, just before he was executed, that
    his aim was to limit brainwashing to theoretical discussions and thus, by averting brutality, protect the students
    from compromising themselves; he hoped, he said, to deceive the organizers of the experiment and to
    tergiversate in anticipation of possible liberation.
    On the other hand Turcanu and Titus Leonida professed the necessity of a system of “re-education by force”, a
    system which by its very nature was elastic and unrestricted, and which permitted any means for attaining its
    objective. It is, of course, understood that no decision concerning the means to be employed could have been
    made without a formal order from the prison’s administration. The proposal to use physical means was much
    more complicated than the Bogdanovici approach, for its purpose was not simply torture in order to elicit true or
    even fictitious confessions from individuals; its avowed purpose was to change the convictions of one thousand
    students hostile to the Communist regime. Turcanu and his collaborators would not have dared even to think of
    doing such a thing without knowing in advance that they had the total support of the Securitate and thus of the
    Communist Party, and it is not likely that they did more than pretend to advocate as their own a procedure they
    had been instructed to use.
    Just before he began to implement the “re-education by force,” Turcanu, we learned, had been visited several
    times by emissaries from the Ministry of the Interior, with whom he held private discussions for hours on end.
    [3] Also, he himself was absent from Pitesti for days, and no one knew whither he had gone or for what
    purpose. What was the subject of his discussions and what promises he received could not be learned even by
    his closest collaborators. Once the tragedy began to unfold, his role appeared clearly and hideously. He was a
    simple agent carrying out an assigned mission.
    The first act was the formation among the prisoners of an ostensibly spontaneous and voluntary organization
    known as “the Organization of Detainees of Communist Convictions. “[4] It was obvious that this organization
    was officially approved: its members claimed to be Party members, and their actions were to be for the “benefit
    of the working class. ” The organization being thus established, the process of implementing the instructions
    given by the Securitate was begun.
    1)
    I. e., The Legion of St. Michael the Archangel, which was undoubtedly the strongest, most resolute, and most
    devoted anti-Communist and nationalist organization in Romania. (Tr. )
    2)
    Until they deposed young King Michael (Mihai) on December 30, 1947, the Soviet maintained a pretense that
    their occupation of Romania was merely temporary, pending the conclusion of a treaty with Austria, and
    accordingly the full rigor of Bolshevik rule was not applied to Romania until 1948. (Tr. )
    3)
    [It may be well to remind the reader at this juncture that the primary function of the Ministry of Interior in
    Romania has always been exercise of the police power of the state, officially to maintain internal security, and
    also, under King Carol, to thwart and paralyze the political opposition. The nearest analogue in the United
    States is the office of the Attorney General (to which the F. B. I. is subject), and one can imagine the power of
    that department, if it had direct jurisdiction over all the state, county, and municipal police forces in the
    nation. When the Bolsheviks took over, they found ready for their own use a highly centralized government
    with a powerful police system, and they needed only to replace the Romanian officials with domestic traitors
    and imported alien terrorists. -- Editor]
    4)Hereafter referred to as O. D. C. C. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER V
    HOSPITAL ROOM FOUR
    On the northern edge of the prison building, on the ground floor, there is a room bearing the number 4. Initially
    it was meant for the sick; that is why it retained the name and was known to the prisoners as “Hospital Room
    Four. ” This room, fairly large, was selected for beginning the experiment for it was secluded from the cells in
    which the students were confined.
    Here is the description of what happened there given to me by a student who was among the first victims.
    “One evening we were taken from a ground-floor cell, where we had spent some time, and walked to Hospital
    Room Four. We were about ten students, all from ‘correction’. [1] In Room Four we found another group of
    students already there — about twenty — including Turcanu and Titus Leonida. We suspected nothing untoward,
    for transfer of prisoners from one room to another was quite frequent and had become almost routine. After six
    o’clock, the time at which the cells of the prison were normally secured for the night, Turcanu stood up and
    menacingly posting himself in front of us, began to talk.
    “‘We, a group of detained students,’ he said, ‘decided to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the workers’ regime,
    for we realize that what we did was against the interests of the working people and Party. We consider that you
    are an obstacle to our desired rehabilitation because of your “anti-workers” attitude. That is why we request you
    to renounce your previous convictions and to join our group. If you will not do this in a normal manner, we will
    use against you all means at our disposal. We are determined to carry out the action to its end and will crush any
    resistance. ‘
    “As I was unfamiliar with what had happened in Suceava, at first I thought this was a joke in bad taste. I had
    never heard such an impertinence, not even from the most fanatical men of the prison administration. I never
    was one of the ‘strong’ ones, and to this day I cannot understand why I was selected among the first ones to be
    worked on. You can imagine the answer I gave together with all those who had been brought with me into
    Room Four by the chief of our section. A sane man, we thought, could not utter such stupidities. So we took his
    speech as a joke, and began to jest.
    “Turcanu expected such a reaction, for he knew quite well the student mentality and convictions. That is why he
    was prepared. All those who were with him in the room when we arrived, remained quiet, waiting. All of them
    had handy, hidden under the nearby bunk blankets, a bludgeon, cudgel, post, belt, or board, supplied naturally
    by the administration, for it would have been impossible for anyone to procure them otherwise.
    “Our reply gave Turcanu the opportunity to start. He furiously raised his cap, and then at once, at that signal, the
    bludgeons and cudgels were brought out from under the blankets. Every one of them was armed and, without
    warning, struck the one of us nearest him. As a matter of fact they had so placed themselves by prearrangement
    that each had a victim handy. Taken by surprise, we were confused. But we came to our senses immediately and
    began to defend ourselves — each as best he could. In desperation, we started to attack. We were at an
    advantage, in fact, for we were defending our own skins while the others struck by command. As they later
    admitted, they really had not expected that matters would go so far. We began to disarm them. In the room one
    could hear only the whacks of the bludgeons and the groans of those stricken. In the confusion one could not
    distinguish the original groups. All were striking to defend themselves, and the fight turned into a life and death
    struggle, in which each man fought furiously to overcome his antagonist. After a while the situation became less
    confused. Although they were twenty against our ten, all those who had attacked us were sprawled on the floor,
    Turcanu included. This was definitely not what the devisers of the experiment had expected, so intervention was
    needed to prove to us that all opposition was vain.
    “During the entire fight the warden, Lieutenant Dumitrescu, had watched through the peephole in the door.
    When he realized that Turcanu and his minions had been worsted, he brusquely opened the door, and,
    surrounded by some twenty prison guards, his leading subordinates and officers of the Securitate, he entered the
    room. All were armed with cudgels, even the warden. Silence ensued. Only a muffled groan could be heard now
    and then. The director ordered everyone to stay where he was. Then followed a dialogue between the director
    and Turcanu.
    “‘What is happening here, you bandits?’ (The term ‘bandit’ was the epithet with which prisoners were addressed
    by the prison administrators). Turcanu took a step forward and replied:
    “‘Sir, we, a group of students, realizing that we had sinned against the working class, opposing its well being
    and that of the people, decided to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the Party. We therefore considered it
    necessary to respect the wishes of the prison administration, to do all that is asked of us, and to re-educate
    ourselves in a Marxist spirit, in order to shorten the period of our detention, and to be of use to the working
    class after our release. But when we began to discuss our intentions, the bandits who are here with us sprang
    upon us with their concealed bludgeons and tried to kill us. We defended ourselves as best we could. We
    therefore beg the administration to protect us from these criminals and to ensure our lives and safety. ‘
    “There followed several exchanges of que

  3. On December 16, 2010 at 9:48 am hoff2 said:

    But when we began to discuss our intentions, the bandits who are here with us sprang
    upon us with their concealed bludgeons and tried to kill us. We defended ourselves as best we could. We
    therefore beg the administration to protect us from these criminals and to ensure our lives and safety. ‘
    “There followed several exchanges of questions and answers in which the warden, simulating astonishment,
    asked Turcanu for further explanations. Then he turned brusquely to us and said: ‘So that’s it, bandits’?
    “That was all! At his signal the guards all attacked us, while Turcanu’s group quickly slipping around behind the
    warden, left our group fully exposed.
    “Who could raise his hand against a uniformed official? We were already bruised and exhausted, and we well
    knew that such resistance meant immediate shooting.
    “There followed a terrible scene, lasting unbelievably for several hours, during which one could hear only the
    thwacks of the bludgeons, the groans of the sufferers, and the profanity of the warden and his henchmen.
    Turcanu’s group helped the guards every now and then, when some unfortunate managed to separate himself
    from the group of those beaten, and tried — futilely — to find a hiding place. The guards dealt their blows with
    all the viciousness they could muster, venting their spite on us for having defied them previously.
    “Weakened by our designedly inadequate diet, overwhelmed by the number and force of the guards as well as
    by the authority they represented, little by little we ceased our futile but still instinctive efforts to avoid the
    blows. By now the guards struck us as they would so many empty sacks. The floor was full of urine and blood.
    Prostrate and exhausted by beating, our bodies were strewn on the floor like corpses on a battlefield. Finally, the
    guards left the room. We thought it was all finished. But this was only the beginning! Turcanu’s group took
    over. We were subjected to an extremely minute bodily search. Everything that might constitute a protection,
    even in imagination, was taken from us. Only our clothing was left us. We were ordered to crawl under the
    large common bed. Those who could not move, were dragged by the ‘re-educators’ under whose dominion we
    would be thenceforth. Many among those who followed Turcanu deplored what was happening. But the
    spectacle of what took place and the alternative of seeing themselves in our shoes compelled them to continue
    in the ways of dishonor. They had not believed that things would reach that stage. Once engaged in the dirty
    game, however, they could not turn back because between them and us there now existed a real abyss. But that
    was only for a time. Several months later I myself did to others what had been done to me.
    “The plan had been elaborated down to the last detail. It was applied on an ever increasing scale as new
    participants were trained. What happened in ‘Hospital Room Four’ was repeated hundreds of times in other
    cells, with only slight variations.
    “Immediately after the beating, we were subjected to the ‘unmasking’. ”
    What the Communist Party perpetrated in the prisons of Romania belongs to the domain of pathological
    psychology. According to the Communist mentality, it was simply a job like any other, which had to be
    successfully concluded, regardless. Human nature, moral or social considerations could not hinder the progress
    of an important experiment.
    In all this tragedy, Turcanu was but an actor, playing under the direction of those who had designed the
    experiment and watched it from beyond the footlights with interest and pleasure. And his original collaborators,
    who hoped to benefit by an earlier release from prison, were only instruments in his hand.
    What deters persons of criminal tendencies in normal society is, no doubt, the fear of punishment by the legal
    justice that maintains social equilibrium. Such were the conditions at Pitesti that Turcanu was assured that he
    would never be called to account, no matter how many acts of bestiality he might commit, because the very
    authorities who were supposed to defend prisoners from violence by their fellows, had ordered and
    implemented the sinister plan that cost the lives of so many students and caused the moral ruin of all the others.
    Probably Turcanu himself did not realize at first how far he was expected to go. He could not have devised the
    operation himself. Its diabolical subtlety and ingenuity lay far beyond his own capabilities. He was only capable
    of doing what he was told. Those who masterminded and directed the operation wanted more than mere
    torturing of the victims. They were determined to penetrate into the most intimate recesses of the human soul,
    probing and prodding it, finding even the smallest cleavages, discovering everything that can be struck, broken,
    destroyed in man to leave him only a body made passive and void of volition.
    Beasts kill out of biological necessity — to feed. But the beast-man when he uses reason to implement his
    hatred, knows no limit. Only men capable of both great lucidity and frenzied hate could have decreed Pitesti.
    That seems paradoxical, but in the Communist world the paradoxical becomes normal. If Turcanu is responsible
    for physical tortures (for which, as a matter of fact, he later paid), it is others who must answer for the entire
    process of destruction. The list of names is long. And it begins with those who destroy the values within man,
    who destroyed his equilibrium without substituting anything in its place. The vacuum gave birth to the
    disorientation. And this disorientation unleashed the madness.
    1)I. e., From the second category described in the preceding chapter. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER VI
    THE COLLAPSE
    The initiators of the experiment already knew very well not only the structure of the Romanian soul but also
    how the particular youths selected for experimentation had been educated in school, at home, and especially in
    the organization to which they were ideologically devoted before their arrest.
    Their complete breakdown could therefore be accomplished only by systematically destroying everything that
    constituted the firm anchorage of their lives and thoughts; in other words, by cutting them loose from their
    moorings. And because Christianity, the diametrical opposite to materialism, has always offered the most
    effective system for living, and because the majority of students arrested were condemned for activity inspired
    by the Legion of St. Michael the Archangel, the approach of the “re-educators” was to attack precisely those
    values on which the Christian ethic is based. By destroying these, they could destroy the very reason the youths
    chose to go to prison rather than compromise their principles.
    Investigations conducted in the Ministry of the Interior and in various regional Securitates, managed to wrest
    quite a few secrets from the students, not so much because of moral weakness as by means of brutal methods of
    interrogation. These were such that it was almost impossible for a student to deny an offense even if he had
    committed none; he admitted the crime to avoid further torture. But even though the Securitate did succeed in
    tearing secrets from tortured minds, it was unable to affect the structure of the soul. On the contrary, having
    passed through these investigations, the students came out more convinced than ever of the righteousness of the
    cause for which they were suffering, and of the absurdity of the newly imposed system. As long, then, as the
    soul remained unaltered, there had been no defeat. So it was precisely the soul that remained the principal
    target, its utter destruction, the aim.
    The Romanian people and their faith appeared in history at no determined date, but the Romanian soul is
    organically commingled with Christianity, perhaps because they were born together, as witness Romania’s
    historical chronicles over several centuries and all the crosses, called troite set up at nearly all crossroads in the
    countryside. Since the Romanian has traditionally put all his hopes in God when trials confronted him, the
    peasants’ sons, now students, turned to God for help in the most trying time of their lives. A prayer murmured
    from the depths of one’s soul by trembling lips was often more satisfying than bread. Though it is often said that
    faith is inversely proportional to the degree of education, exactly the opposite was found in Romania’s prisons.
    Those whose belief was strongest, who felt the greatest need to pray, were definitely the best educated,
    irrespective of their political affiliation, including even the most materialistic socialists, who discovered the
    closeness of God, in prison, where only true faith could fill the void of their lives.
    The Communists recognized this fact and decided to strike from the beginning with all fury, aiming to produce
    despair and despondency until this faith was destroyed. Thus could they render ineffective the twin pillars of
    Romanian patriotism: Christian moral precepts, and tradition.
    Everything of the past which could offer any kind of refuge was to be muddied and denigrated. This included
    the heroes of history and the folklore of Christian inspiration. Then, to be given special attention, was the
    destruction of love for family, in order completely to isolate the victim in his own misery, bereft of religion,
    love of country, and family. This would break the chain that links together a community of national thought and
    gives meaning to a national struggle. When the individual was thus cut off from his history, faith and family, the
    ultimate step in “re-educating” him was to destroy his existence as a personality — an individual. This, to the
    victim, was to prove the most painful step of all and was called his “unmasking. ”
    These, then, were the main objectives of the experiment launched at Pitesti Prison by which the “re-educators”
    hoped to produce in the end “the new man,” de-personalized, a robot which they could manipulate.
    The preparations necessary for initiating the last cruel step, the “unmasking,” were probably patterned after
    methods explained in a book by a Russian lawyer who, arrested and tortured after confessing everything, wrote
    it for the benefit of his interrogators. It is rumored that this happened during the first investigations carried out
    by the Communist police after the capture of Russia. In the book, the author used himself as an example,
    searching his own soul, and succeeded in placing at the disposal of his torturers a psychological treatise of
    overwhelming importance. Analyzing himself, he discovered the weak points in man, the most vulnerable ones,
    through which an ultimate breakdown can be achieved.
    The weaknesses, or “cracks” as he calls them in his book, are hunger, psychological terror, endless uncertainty,
    and total isolation. Months of undernourishment, therefore, which our student prisoners had already endured,
    laid the groundwork quite well for what was to follow.
    There you have the prerequisites for applying the “unmasking” technique. Practically speaking, it consisted of
    two distinct phases, the outer and the inner unmasking. The first was but an intensification of Communist
    Securitate’s usual investigative methods involving not only some torture but much that was grotesque and
    irrational. But the second, the “inner unmasking,” which was to result in the final breakdown, was the one that
    received the greatest attention from the experts.
    The first phase carried to completion the secret police’s earlier investigations through a torturing system
    whereby they sought to squeeze a man into the position of declaring all, but absolutely all, that he had done or
    intended to do prior to his arrest. He had to name and denounce all persons he had been in contact with, all who
    helped him with money or food, advice or moral encouragement; all who had sheltered him; all who knew of
    his activities even if they did not participate in them; all who did not sympathize with the Communist regime;
    all whom he suspected of having infiltrated the Party or having joined it opportunistically; anybody who seemed
    likely later to engage in anti-Party activity; maligners of the Party; etc. Then he had to tell whether he had any
    ideological material — books, documents, newspapers, circulars, etc. — which he had not declared during earlier
    questioning; where they were hidden; who else knew of their existence; whether he possessed firearms; if so,
    where hidden. Particular emphasis was placed on firearms, especially those stored away by peasants as the
    German troops retreated in 1944; and on any individuals of the “people’s army” who might later, through
    bribery or corruption, place at the disposal of the “enemies of the people” weapons or anything else that could
    be used against the Party.
    The oral declarations were first demanded from the victims, were then inscribed on soap plaques, verified and
    attested by a member of the “re-education committee” (or by Turcanu himself, if the case seemed a bit
    interesting), and were finally put on paper, signed by the declarant, and sent to special officers of the Ministry
    of the Interior, who proceeded, as soon as possible after screening the information, to arrest the persons
    “denounced” in the declaration. Also as part of this outer unmasking, the student, if he had been transferred
    from another prison, had to detail his activities there as well as give a detailed account of his activities after
    arriving at Pitesti.
    During the first months of their imprisonment, before Turcanu began his work, students had been allowed a
    modicum of freedom, being supervised more or less superficially by the guards, and had organized their free
    time for their own benefit. Not having books or writing materials, not even pencil and paper (it was dangerous
    to be found possessing these), students discovered anew the Roman stylus, using soap tablets instead of wax
    ones. It was on these little tablets that all writing was done. In the absence of books, courses in foreign
    languages were pursued, also in advanced mathematics, chemistry and other subjects as remembered from
    student days. Discussions proved to be quite fruitful, especially among those who had studied philosophy,
    literature, law, and theology, many aspects of Romania’s spiritual life as well as problems of sociology and
    philosophical orientation. All this was condoned by the Communists, who considered it a matter of adjusting to
    life inside a prison; but if they detected, under cover of these educational sessions, any sort of political activity,
    the punishment was more severe than for similar activity outside.
    Nevertheless, there was no lack of discussion of a purely political character among students of different
    convictions. Through these talks they came to know one another better and were able to clear up disagreements
    of the past. These discussions frequently led to real rapprochement, dissipating erroneous impressions formed
    during earlier confrontations when passions were less well controlled; and a mutual esteem previously
    unthought of thus developed. It was this kind of information about the students that the “unmaskers”
    particularly were after.
    The individual under interrogation had to confess all the discussions he had had with his fellows, report in detail
    all educational meetings that had dealt with citizenship and political events, and denounce all who had shown
    attitudes hostile to the prison administration or made sarcastic remarks in connection with interpretation of
    Marxism, or jokes about Stalin the “teacher. ” Answers were required to such questions as who among the
    students had a “fanatical” attitude; or was better informed; or was capable of polarizing the younger members
    around him; who gave medical help to those condemned to hard labor — all this in order to determine precisely
    the classification of individuals for eventual use in “unmasking” those who as yet had not walked through the
    fire.
    When the student had declared all, or as much as he had to in order to convince the re-education committee that
    he was hiding nothing, only then began the real tragedy, the “inner unmasking,” the attempt to annihilate the
    soul. Through the first unmasking he had given over enough information and names to the Securitate to destroy
    collaborators still free; now he would be forced to yield up his own personality for immolation. The
    re-educators hoped to destroy the moral and psychological strength of his inner being and transform him into
    amorphous material, to be shaped by them into a “new structurization. ”
    To this end the students were obliged to crush underfoot everything they held most sacred — God, family,
    friends, love, wife, colleagues, memories, ideology — everything which bound them to the past, anything that
    might give them inner support while in prison.
    When the student had passed this test also, to the satisfaction of the re-educators, he became an “honest and
    clean” vessel worthy of receiving the new doctrine of Marxist humanism, embodied at that time in the person of
    “the genial leader of the peoples,” Mr. J. V. Stalin.
    In the name of this doctrine of re-structuring, and to justify the unmaskings in his own way, Turcanu used to
    say:
    “You bandit, I beat in you the Legionary criminal (or the National Party member, as the case might be); I have
    nothing against you personally. By my action, I am helping you to discard the criminal concept that brought you
    here, and am preparing you to join in a new cause, more just, the cause of the working people. ”
    As a matter of fact, this is the kind of treatment which, on different levels and in different terms, is applied to all
    of society under Communist tutelage. Through devious propaganda manipulation, the Communists try to make
    man believe that general pauperism is not real, that the state of affairs could not be better, and that this is the
    only road to happiness …
    For those who have lived under Communism, a paradox such as this is not uncommon, and they are not long
    surprised at the considerable disproportion between what is claimed and what is actually done. For instance, all
    kinds of laws are enacted to satisfy every human need, but exactly the opposite is practiced. But about this one
    cannot speak in a loud voice …
    CHAPTER VII
    THE CONDITIONED REFLEXES
    The Communists apply to human beings the well-known principle of conditioned reflexes that explains much of
    the behavior of animals.
    These reflexes, which are the basis of Socialist medical science and psychology, are often called “Pavlovian
    reflexes” after the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov,[1] who was the first to conduct systematic experiments,
    chiefly on dogs, to determine the exact nature of this neurophysiological reaction. Actually, however, the
    phenomenon that Pavlov investigated was well known for centuries and extensively used in practice to train
    animals. The most famous of Pavlov’s experiments was performed by giving a dog a chunk of meat at the
    ringing of a bell. After this has been done several times, the dog’s reflexes are so conditioned that the animal
    will salivate abundantly when it hears the bell although he has no meat before him. For many centuries before
    Pavlov, however, conditioned reflexes were used; for example, by gypsies to produce dancing bears. A small
    bear cub is walked over a sheet of metal under which there is a slow burning fire. As the sheet metal becomes
    warm, the soles of the little bear’s feet begin to pain him and he lifts one foot after another, shifting his weight
    alternately to cool the soles of his feet. While he is doing this, drums are beaten. After this training has been
    repeated several times, the neurological association between the sound of the drums and the movement of the
    feet is established, and ever thereafter, the bear, although full grown, will begin to “dance” whenever he hears
    the beating of the drums. Such, reduced to its simplest terms, is the procedure for producing conditioned
    reflexes in irrational animals.
    When the Communists apply this technique to their human subjects, they must first reduce their victims to the
    condition of animals.
    When one destroys in man the moral and intellectual foundation of his being, his consciousness of personal
    identity and superiority, and thus deprives him of control over his own faculties by reason and will, man ceases
    to be a superior being. There is no longer any difference between man and animal. He will submit, as do
    animals, to biological impulses.
    That is why, when he encountered unexpected opposition in a cell, Turcanu affirmed: “Your resistance is in
    vain. This system has been perfected and used for twenty-five years[2] and so far it has never failed. You will
    become convinced of this yourselves. I do not work haphazardly. ” The prison’s warden, the Bolshevik
    Lieutenant Dumitrescu, stated several times in more than one cell, a little before the beginning of
    “re-education”: “Even if you were made out of granite, you would not be able to resist all the way. Shortly you
    will see that I do not lie. ” At Pitesti, at least as far as the basic method was concerned, the experimenters
    improvised nothing; from the very first they applied a method that had worked innumerable times and whose
    results could be predicted with certainty.
    How the system was elaborated and tested, I do not know, but its effects were certain. A mere reference to the
    tortures was like Professor Pavlov’s bell or the gypsies’ drum. A word was sufficient to trigger the reflex that
    pain and degradation had created, and the man was at once paralyzed and behaved as the experimenters wished.
    Beginning with the prisoners from the “correction” category and from labor camps, the “re-educators” trained a
    group sufficiently large to handle the other categories of prisoners. This operation was facilitated by the
    distribution of the students among cells, which held from five to fifteen persons, who were thus always together
    but completely isolated from contact with others, since the cells were locked and shuttered from the outside
    both day and night. This isolation in small units facilitated the operation.
    At first only a few, then more and more, and finally all the students went through “re-education. ” And all
    became finally, no matter how long they resisted, mindless docile creatures of which the supervisors made
    further use according to a well established plan. There where no exceptions. Only those who were so lucky as to
    die under torture and those who, profiting by some oversight on the part of their tormentors, found a way to
    commit suicide, escaped the transformation.
    Men who had for two years, day after day, night after night, defied the tortures and the bullets of the
    Communist Securitate, crumbled little by little under the Pavlovian technique and, overwhelmed by despair,
    terror, incertitude, were metamorphosed into zombies.
    What radical transformations take place in the soul of one whose right of biological self-destruction is denied,
    who for years on end is kept in a state of living death with an ingenuity truly Satanic? What can survive
    systematic menticide? Heroism? Self-sacrifice? Ethical convictions? Idealism? Had the pagans during the
    persecutions of Christians used Communist methods, it is probable that the Christian calendar would number
    fewer saints and martyrs.
    What could be more depressing than this thought? Among the victims of the Communists, there are no heroes
    – there can be no heroes.
    Is heroism perhaps a simple state of psychic exaltation nourished by sentiment that depends on events and
    environment? Under the conditions created at Pitesti, not only could no one become a hero, but the very concept
    of heroism was obliterated.
    If some day in the future it becomes possible thoroughly to investigate the applications of Bolshevik techniques
    and the profound mutations of the human psyche induced by them, civilized mankind will arraign and damn not
    the ephemeral creatures who carried out the techniques of torment, but the perennial originators of the appalling
    techniques that reduce man to a level inferior to that of animals.
    After the first phase of procedure initiated in Hospital Room Four was completed and the victims had been
    reduced to the desired psychopathological state of passive desperation and animal helplessness, they were
    judged ripe for the next stage in the process. They were ready now for the second phase in which the prisoners
    would be brought to denounce one another spontaneously and without any instigation by the prison authorities.
    Transfers from one cell to another were effected by prison authorities as Turcanu directed. They gave him a free
    hand to shuffle prisoners around as he thought expedient in the “unmasking” program, and he had at his
    disposal the entire list of condemned men, by which he could switch prisoners back and forth in various
    combinations. To hide his role, the transfers were always made by the prison guards on orders from above.
    Turcanu had transfers made so that a group of students who had passed through the training given in Hospital
    Room Four shared a cell with a group of students who had heard nothing of the “unmasking” technique and
    naturally entertained — could entertain — no suspicion of the newcomers, who seemed to have been placed with
    them only by one of the seemingly random rearrangements of prisoners that the prison authorities frequently
    decreed. For two or three weeks, the “un-masked” students started discussions, criticized the Communist
    regime, and exchanged information seeking to loosen the tongues of their unsuspecting companions who were
    next in line for “re-education”, in order to elicit from each at least several compromising statements for later
    use. Such statements were sought as a means of destroying, when the time come, first, the confidence and trust
    that the students then reposed in one another (for at that time no one who had not been “re-educated” could even
    imagine what was in store for them) and second, their natural aversion to Communism.
    The prisoners, who were deprived of all ordinary materials for writing, had long been accustomed secretly to
    use soap tablets for memoranda and even communication between cells. The newcomers — complying of
    course, with the instructions of the masters — took advantage of this custom and wrote down on these tablets
    everything they thought could be helpful in the coming “unmaskings. ” They concealed these inscribed tablets
    of soap and transmitted them to Turcanu or his assistants, either in the morning when they were taken out of the
    cell to the lavatory, or when they were called out by guards, ostensibly summoned to the main office, but really
    so that they could, without arousing suspicion, report to Turcanu in the corridor outside the cell. At other times,
    these soap tablets were hidden in predetermined places in the washroom, and collected, after the night lock-up,
    by agents of the Securitate. The records on soap were also given furtively to prison guards, to the persons who
    distributed the food, or to others whom the “re-educated” could on occasion approach in ways that excited no
    remark among their unsuspecting cellmates.
    The “re-educators”, of course, had no need for the information thus obtained and recorded; it could have been
    extracted anyway during the “unmaskings. ” This procedure was ordained for three reason: first, it confirmed
    each of the “re-educated” in his conditioned habit of hypocrisy and treachery toward his intended victims and
    simultaneously bound the “re-educated” together by their common guilt; second, the surreptitious provoking
    and recording of compromising statements kept the “re-educated” in a state of constant vigilance and anxiety,
    for they realized that if, by some lingering sentiment of decency or sheer oversight, they were inefficient in their
    assumed roles, they would be given more “re-education” themselves; and finally, the production of such
    devastatingly complete and accurate information at the psychological moment would take the victims
    completely by surprise and stun them, so to speak, by a blow from inside.
    After some weeks, when it was thought that enough compromising data had been collected, the “re-educators”
    in the cell were put into action. At that time, one of the leaders of the O. D. C. C., usually Turcanu himself,
    entered the cell escorted by several of his collaborators. The appearance of this contingent both reminded the
    “re-educated” in the cell of what they had undergone, thus triggering their conditioned reflexes, and had the
    practical effect of bringing in a team of strong bully-boys to avert the possibility that, as had happened in
    Hospital Room Four, a desperate resistance might make necessary the direct intervention of the prison
    authorities. The contingent that escorted Turcanu on such occasions was composed of well-fed, vigorous and
    husky men, not to mention Turcanu himself, who was truly a Hercules by comparison with the students who
    had been physically debilitated by the starvation diet to which they had been long and continuously subjected.
    Considering the fact that the bullyboys were precisely the trusties who did the work of distributing the food to
    each cell, it is obvious how they obtained ample nourishment, despite the official doctrine that all prisoners are
    “bandits” who must not be allowed “to live on the back of the working people. ” The intelligentsia who, from
    behind the scenes, directed the whole sinister tragedy, had arranged even such details in advance so that nothing
    could happen to disturb the performance of their play.
    After the contingent of “re-educators” entered a cell, a “meeting” began with a discourse, usually by Turcanu
    himself, consisting of the same stereotyped phrases that had been uttered in Hospital Room Four: “the need for
    ‘re-education’”, “bandits who oppose it”, “the necessity of breaking all resistance by no matter what means”,
    etc., etc. [3] At the conclusion of the “speech”, all the inmates of the cell, including the “re-educated” were
    asked to make their “unmasking” (“self-denouncement”) immediately. The answer of the students was always
    the same, and likewise Turcanu’s reaction: he gave the signal by lifting either his cap or his hand, and then, as in
    Hospital Room Four, began the beatings. But now the confusion and dismay of the victims was even greater, for
    they saw among their assailants their own cellmates, whom they had until that very moment regarded as
    brothers. Now these trusted comrades were suddenly dealing them desperate blows, in the back more often than
    not. How could they know the motivation for a transformation apparently instantaneous?
    The “re-educators” exploited to the utmost that first moment of bewilderment. A man who had been a literary
    student described that moment to me in these words:
    “When Turcanu ended his speech I thought he was crazy. And we all looked at one another in astonishment. But
    only a few moments elapsed. He raised his cap. That very instant, a friend, probably the best friend I had before
    we were arrested and a man in whom I had blind faith, struck me full in my face with his fist, delivering so
    furious a blow that I was dazed. I looked at him in utter terror. My hands hung down, suddenly powerless. I was
    not capable of saying one word; I was simply unable to ask him why. He continued to strike me with the same
    desperation. I could not muster even the slightest resistance. At first I thought this was a nightmare or that all
    our minds had been suddenly darkened by a collective madness. Finally I tried to ask him something; I do not
    know anymore what it was. His reply was a rain of blows with his fists accompanied by facial expressions so
    hideous that they seemed to hurt me even more than the pummeling. It was only then that I somehow collected
    my wits and tried to defend myself. But from behind, another student, who had been brought into my cell at the
    same time as my friend some two weeks before, attacked me. This fellow was armed with a cudgel. I could not
    imagine where he had obtained it! I could not get out of the way anymore. I started to strike in desperation, at
    random, wherever I could. I tried to open a path towards the wall to protect my back, but someone with a cudgel
    landed a powerful blow on my left arm. Then another cudgel descended on my head. My body trembled. Other
    blows followed; they rained upon me. In the cell a frightening brawl was taking place. Groans, the thuds of
    cudgels, curses were blent into a chaotic uproar.
    “After a while the cudgels broke, and the fight became body to body. But we were far fewer and weaker than
    our assailants. One by one we fell to the floor, physically unable to rise. Later, I lapsed into unconsciousness.
    How long I remained in that state, I do not know. When I came to, I was covered with blood and black and blue
    all over. My body was numb, yet it ached in every fibre. I could not move. My companions were in the same
    state. Turcanu had left the room, leaving us in the hands of his collaborators, the men, (including my erstwhile
    bosom friend) who had been brought into our cell two weeks before and who, as was now obvious to us, had
    come already appointed as our ‘re-education committee’, a position they now openly assumed. What had just
    happened had created a bottomless abyss between us and them. Turcanu could breathe freely, for none of his
    men could now let him down. But at that bitter moment I did not imagine — could not have believed — that, in a
    few months, I myself would reach a condition in which I tortured others in order to ‘re-educate’ them. ”
    When the young man finished that narrative — this was several years after the “unmaskings” — an indescribable
    despair could be read on his face. Then he concluded: “By an unimaginable fatality, we became the
    gravediggers of our own aspirations, of our own souls. For never again will we be able to raise our heads.
    Christians once died happily for their faith. But we, also Christians, could not attain that happiness. We became
    the tools of the Communism that we heartily detested, in order mutually to destroy ourselves, in order to bury
    our dearest hopes in unique madness, hopes that we had nourished with much suffering and worldly
    renunciation. It was as if Satan had grabbed us from the hands of God. If I had then an opportunity to commit
    suicide, I would have wanted nothilig more. But now, in my present state, I lack even the courage to do it. I may
    seem to be whole, but in reality I am only the wreck of myself, discredited in the eyes of my friends, and
    despised by my enemies. And yet, in essence, we were guilty of nothing, really. ”
    In those scenes, the ratio of forces was usually two to one. Furthermore, the “re-educated” had been equipped
    with bludgeons, cudgels, boards, and straps, and they were inspired by the strange induced hatred that drove
    them to reduce all prisoners to a common level, so that no one could look at another with accusing eyes. In that
    furious urge they vented their own agony born of the knowledge that they had been unable to resist, were not
    able to die before submitting.
    Seldom did the guards have to intervene. But sometimes, despite the disproportion of numbers and strength, the
    desperation and resistance that followed the first moment of surprise and bewilderment, made it necessary to
    bring in re-enforeements for the “re-educators. ” The warden, Dumitrescu, always supervised through the
    peephole the progress of the “unmasking” inside, especially at the very beginning, which was the critical
    juncture.
    In general, the first beating lasted between three and four hours, but in some cases it lasted through nine
    consecutive hours, for desperation awakens in man forces little known. The students were one by one
    eliminated from the fight. After each man had been beaten to immobility or unconsciousness, his skull cracked
    or his ribs broken, he was stripped and subjected to a minute personal search. Every article that could
    conceivably be used for protection or to commit suicide was taken and confiscated. Then the naked and inert
    bodies were shoved under the bunk-bed. As each man recovered consciousness, the beatings were resumed by
    the “re-education committee. ”
    For days, those in the “position of unmasking” were subjected to this brutal regimen. Unable to resist or to
    defend themselves, kept under stringent surveillance, to prevent them from commiting suicide, their minds
    gradually succumbed to the utter despair that the “unmasking” technique was designed to produce. And they
    abandoned themselves to the tortures, passively waiting with blighted consciousness for whatever was to
    happen to them.
    The methods used in “unmaskings” were basically uniform. All means of attaining the calculated goal were, of
    course, sanctioned, and if there were some variations in the administration of torture, they were merely small
    details that the criminal mentalities of the various bosses were permitted to introduce into the fixed pattern of
    procedure.
    1)
    At the time of the Bolshevik capture of Russia, Pavlov, who was almost seventy years old, failed to escape
    from Russia, but was not liquidated. He held the strange notion that scientific research was “non-political”,
    and placed the results of his work at the disposal of the Bolsheviks, who rewarded him with a handsome
    pension and every facility for continuing his researches until his death in 1936. Of course, Pavlov conducted
    many other and more complicated experiments to reduce animals to total prostration by producing conflicts
    between established reflexes. These principles are, of course, applied by the Communists to destroy the
    victim’s rationality, but the subject is too extensive to be discussed in this note. For further information, see
    any good treatise on neuro-psychological phenomena. For a brief outline, see Chapter Two of Edward
    Hunter’s Brainwashing, New York, 1956; or later reprints. (Tr. )
    2)
    This means that the system used at Pitesti was put in operation in Russia immediately after the aged Pavlov
    spent three months in the Kremlin as the almost royal guest of Ulyanov, alias Lenin, for whom he prepared a
    secret 400-page manual on the ways of inducing conditioned reflexes and inhibitions in human beings. The
    first film to train Bolshevik secret police in Pavlovian methods was, so far as is known, produced in 1928.
    (Tr. )
    3)
    Communist verbiage normally follows stereotyped patterns, but it may be noteworthy that the repetition here
    would serve more forcefully to remind the “re-educated” of the preliminaries to their transformation. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER VIII
    A ROUTINE DAY
    In Pitesti prison, the day began at five o’clock in the morning to allow time for the cleaning and straightening of
    the cell, which had to be done by six. This chore obligatorily fell upon the “Catholics”, as those considered
    more “fanatical” or more resistant to “re-education” were called. The run-of-the-mill prisoners were put to work
    washing windows or doing other menial chores. Those who scrubbed the floors were compelled to carry
    “piggyback” at least one of the “re-educated” and sometimes two or three of them, as prescribed by the
    “re-education committee. ” Floor scrubbing lasted until six o’clock when the guards came around to take the
    head count. Often the warden himself or officers of the Securitate came to open the cells for inspection. The
    inmates were, of course, compelled to stand at attention, while the cell’s leader, always one of the “re-educated”,
    gave a report. Men who had been so tortured that they could not stand up, were put in the back row and
    supported under their arms by the “re-educated” — doubtless to spare the warden’s feelings!
    Following the morning inspection, the cells were said to be “open. ” At this time the students were taken out
    under guard to “wash” and to clean “the bucket” — a kind of wooden container used during the previous day for
    their necessities. According to a prison-wide rule of the “re-education committee” the use of this archaic toilet
    was restricted to urination. For other necessities, students were permitted twice a day to use common toilets in
    the hall of their section of the prison.
    There are some aspects of the life of a prisoner which are usually not mentioned, for the details are repugnant,
    but I must allude to them here because they formed one of the most carefully planned and effective elements of
    the program of “re-education. ”
    The gamut of torment and humiliation to which the students were subjected was cunningly increased when they
    went to the lavatory and toilet. The time allowed one who was in the “state of unmasking” was too short even
    for the necessary preparation. It varied from thirty seconds or less to a maximum of one minute, the exact
    amount of time being left within these limits to the discretion of the one escorting the “bandit. ” Those who
    were unable to finish in the allotted time, were pulled out by the collar, beaten because they “sabotaged
    cleanliness”, and hustled back into their cells, where they had to wait either until evening, or, if the incident
    occurred during the evening program, until the next morning. When this happened repeatedly in consecutive
    trips, the victim had to resort to other means much more humiliating. The same thing happened in the wash
    room, where one was hardly given the time to wet his hands. Of course, this program was continued with
    unrelenting thoroughness until the “unmasking” was completed.
    This system of degradation was extensively applied in all the Securitate centers of Communist Romania. As an
    example I give only one case: In the summer of 1952 I was under interrogation at the Constanta Securitate.
    Sometime in August, Dr. Papahagi was brought into our cell. He used to be the chief medical officer of Tulcea
    County. Although he was a member of the Communist Party, he had just been arrested for “Fascist” activity,
    supposedly carried out many years before when he was a pupil in a Romanian high school in Greece! The
    guards of the section in which he was confined were all from Tulcea, where he had practiced medicine for many
    years, and they knew him well. But nevertheless he was literally grabbed by his collar and kicked, undressed as
    he was, by an illiterate guard from Jurilofca. They gave him less than a minute to use the toilet. The doctor
    came back into the cell weeping. To that moment he had thought I was too emotional when I talked about the
    inhuman treatment that was our lot in prison!
    Returned to their rooms, the students received the morning’s food rations — a serving consisting of a spoonfull
    (250 cc. ) of cornmeal soup, called terci, or the same quantity of tea. Students who were in “position of
    unmasking”, had no right to eat as everybody else ate. They were forced to eat “hog-like”, using only their
    mouths! They had to kneel down, hands behind their backs, or go down on all fours, if such was the command
    of the “re-education chief. ” In this position, they had to suck up the hot liquid from the mess-pan placed before
    them. The result was that the student ended with his lips burned. There was always initial resistance to this
    demand to behave like a hog, but after severe and prolonged torture everyone was finally compelled to submit.
    A “bandit” was not allowed to wash his mess-pan after consuming its contents. The washing had to be done by
    licking, because the water distributed to cells could be used only by those already “re-educated. ” There was no
    running water in the cells. Trusties brought it in from the halls in wooden casks or similar vessels. Breakable
    containers that might give someone a means of committing suicide were forbidden.
    Immediatelv after finishing “breakfast”, those under “unmasking” took their “positions. ” Each was obliged to
    sit on the edge of the bed, his legs stretched out, his hands on his knees, his head lifted and looking always
    forward, without being allowed to turn it in either direction. Each was constantly watched over by a guard,
    recruited naturally from among those who already had gone through “unmaskings. ” The slightest deviation
    from the assigned position was summarily and severely punished by the guard, who then reported to his
    superior, the chief of the “re-education committee”, who in his turn inflicted a Supplementary chastisement.
    The noon meal was served between eleven and twelve o’clock. Bread was distributed first. When the regular
    guard approached the cell, or when the familiar mealtime noise out in the hall was heard, at a given signal,
    everyone adopted as natural a position as possible “in order to keep the guard in the dark with respect to our
    activities in the cell”, even though that guard had participated in an earlier phase of “unmasking”, either on his
    own or under the direction of the warden or of an officer of the Securitate. Every student walked past the bread
    basket and meal barrel placed in the doorway to receive his portion. The moment the door of the cell was closed
    and locked, the discipline of “unmasking” was resumed. A “bandit” was not permitted to use his hands while
    eating his bread. Often, with his hands tied behind his back and the bread thrown in front of him, he was forced
    to eat it kneeling down and using only his mouth. The tiniest crumb had to be picked off the floor by his tongue
    or his lips! Sometimes the method was changed. A prisoner was permitted to use his hands in eating his bread,
    but then the nine ounce hunk was broken into two or three pieces, each of which he had to stuff whole into his
    mouth.
    The rest of the noon meal was served in essentially the same manner as the breakfast tea, except that at this
    meal, the torment was greater. In the morning the tea or the terci would cool a little if one stalled a bit, even if
    one was beaten for doing so, but the food at the noon meals, being somewhat thicker and usually consisting
    mainly of husked oats, took longer to cool. The “re-education committee” demanded that each “bandit”
    consume his meal as soon as possible; one of its members placed himself in front of the “bandit” and by
    beating, forced him to lap up the steaming food at once. The mess-pan was again cleaned by licking. Or, on
    other occasions, any form of cleaning was strictly forbidden, because the “enemies of the people” need no
    cleanliness … After this, the prisoners resumed their assigned positions.
    A slight interruption occurred at five o’clock. The warden or a chief guard went from cell to cell counting the
    prisoners. The positions taken were the same as those of the morning. Those who could not stand alone were
    placed in the back rows and were flanked by two “re-educated. ” After the six o’clock inspection, return to the
    assigned positions on the edge of the beds was continued until nine o’clock, when the “lights out” signal was
    given — (an anachronous term retained from the times when prisoners could turn off lights for the night). Under
    Communist rule, in the prisons of Romania — all prisons — lights burn in the cells all night. When the bell rang
    out in the hall, each prisoner had to go to bed, and talking after this time was punishable according to
    regulations. But “lights out” at Pitesti was the beginning of a new ordeal. After thirteen hours of continuous
    torment, the victims were allowed to sleep only in a prescribed position that was, perhaps, more cruel than the
    others. Stretched on his back, face up, his body out straight, with his hands above the blanket covering his body
    to his chest, the student was not permitted to alter that sleeping position in any way. At his feet, with a bludgeon
    in his hands, stood watch a student guard; who in turn was tormented by lack of sleep and therefore the more
    antagonized by any resistance of his charge.
    To whom does it not happen while sleeping, involuntarily, to turn on one side, or to raise his knees? A blow on
    the ankle-bone given with the full force of the arm brought the one who had moved again into the “correct”
    position. The watcher was obliged to strike a strong blow because he feared not only the “unmasking
    committee”, but also the one whom he was watching. I do not mean that the recipient of the blow would request
    that he be struck a strong blow, but the watcher himself was apprehensive of being punished, should he show
    any pity. For when once a man’s resistance was broken, he began to talk about “everything,” and if the watcher
    did not strike him hard enough, he in the course of his “unmasking” would tell that on such and such an
    occasion he had been let off lightly by his watcher, who must therefore be a former friend, and must either have
    made an incomplete “unmasking” or had a recurrence of bourgeois thoughts and prejudices. Thus it often
    happened that watchers were forced back into the routine of “unmasking” for a second time, merely because
    someone denounced them for not having struck him hard enough during the “sleeping discipline”!
    Following the first blow, sleep did not return, and sleeplessness took over. It was as if they were attending a
    wake for the dead — and began usually immediately or shortly after “lights-out. ”
    Hours passed snail-paced; the victims tried to stay awake, afraid that they would turn or make some involuntary
    movement if they fell asleep, because a blow received under such circumstances has a terrific psychological
    effect. And when it happened that one nevertheless fell asleep, the sleep was not a normal sleep, but a kind of
    unconsciousness resulting from total exhaustion. Morning was expected with relief and return to the rigid
    position of “unmasking” came as a blessing!
    How many secret supplications were made to Heaven, how many desperate minds sought to discover
    somewhere, even in the most fantastic and absurd conjectures, a ray of hope or a prospect of death! But neither
    came. For the time being only physical suffering filled their consciousness; the agony of the soul would come
    later. For the sufferers, time had ceased to exist except as a scarcely comprehended alternation between the light
    of day and that of the electric bulb overhead. And yet they resisted. The capacity to endure, that wonderful
    weapon of the soul that raised to sainthood so many ordinary mortals, was here also abundantly manifested.
    The students endured and waited. It was a desperate waiting, endless, unnatural, for in their hearts they had
    known for a long time that they were utterly helpless and at the mercy of their torturers. They were convinced
    that in all the other prisons too, and perhaps outside as well, the system of decomposition by torture was being
    applied to everyone. They knew, too, that it was impossible to resist forever, for each man saw a former friend,
    whom he had known intimately and in whom he had previously had implicit faith, who had yielded, who had
    changed into a non-human. Yet, something inside still encouraged the victims to resist, to resist in the hidden
    depths of their minds.
    When the patience of the “re-education committee” wore thin or rather when the unseen experts who directed
    everything from the shadows judged that the time had come, there was uttered the terrible question that
    everybody expected, from which no one was exempt.
    “Bandit, have you decided to make your unmasking?”
    Those who were already broken heard that question with a kind of painful relief and began to talk. They were
    then put through the entire procedure for the total disintegration of their souls.
    But most of the students, even though they seemed broken, were obstinate and responded drily: “I have nothing
    to unmask. Everything I knew I confessed at the Securitate. ”
    The “re-educators” considered that answer a defiance. It was only then that the “real beating” began.
    Many were the students who provoked the beatings not only deliberately but eagerly — out of despair. The
    beatings gave them their only hope of dying. For everyone who preferred death to acceptance of degradation
    hoped desperately that during such a beating he might receive a fatal blow that would end his perpetual torment,
    and release him from the unbearable burden of life. But the directors of the experiment knew all of this, and so
    did the tormentors inside the cells, for many of them, when in the same situation, had longed and hoped for a
    deathdealing blow. They were under orders categorically forbidding such mercy. No blows were permitted on
    the temples, the region of the heart, the base of the head, or any other spot where a blow could be fatal. The
    physical death of students had to be prevented in order to kill the soul. The whole purpose, of course, of the
    unhuman directors was to extirpate the soul and replace it with conditioned reflexes. Only thus could they
    create the new man needed in the society of tomorrow of which they dream. In the jargon of the Marxist theory
    of dialectical materialism, such creation is called “dis-alienation. “[1] It is attained by a crucifixion of the soul
    ending in moral, not physical death.
    When the longed-for death did not come, men craved for the blow that would make them unconscious, their
    only way of escaping for even a few moments from the inferno invented by those who promise mankind
    paradise on earth.
    1)
    Marx said that men, because of religion, became alienated, in other words, that they lost their original and
    correct direction. “Dis-alienation”, then, is the process bringing the individual back to a form of “reasoning”
    uncontaminated by religious superstitions and by the burden of several thousands of years of “slavery. ”
    CHAPTER IX
    THE CATHOLICS
    From the beginning, at the time when the files of those who were to pass into “unmaskings” were compiled,
    students were divided into two groups according to their soul’s strength or to the role played as members of the
    resistance organizations. The first category consisted of the less spirited students with an indeterminate record
    of activity, who thus were not good timber for the making of the “new man,” but whose weakness was yet not
    sufficient reason to exempt them from unmaskings. They also were passed through the entire gamut of
    disintegration but usually with less insistence and not very extensive tortures. These were the ones who fell
    earlier than others when the question, “You bandit, have you decided to make your unmasking?” was put to
    them. Their number was not very large in relation to the total number arrested. They were named by the
    unmaskers gugustiuci, an ironic term meaning “wild pigeons,” in other words, creatures not entirely responsible
    for their present plight.
    The second category, which gave the initiators many a headache although it suited their purposes better,
    included the more spirited, fanatical students, those who resisted a long time, those who had to be passed
    through a second cycle of tortures before being broken. These were called “Catholics. ”
    One of the tests for the fanatical students was forced gymnastics, especially the semi-squat or “frog. ” To touch
    the heels with the buttocks was not permitted, and the hands had to be held laterally the whole time, stretched
    out, or raised high above the head. During this semi-squat posture, the student had to raise and lower himself in
    time to a rhythm set by the re-educator by hitting on wood with a stick hours on end, uninterruptedly.
    Normally and without any coercion, a man in good physical condition can do up to fifty flexions of this kind,
    after which his legs begin to stiffen. The student A. D. from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest, arrested in 1948
    and sentenced to ten years, did in a single night, above the portable toilet, over one thousand. When he stepped
    down he still had the strength to continue; it was the fatigue of the rhythm-beater which stopped the
    performance. To what mysterious force can be attributed this physical resistance on the part of a man exhausted
    by malnutrition, sleepless nights, and the obligatory positions imposed on him in the days preceding this test?
    For this case is but one from among the hundreds of victims who managed to pass the one thousand-mark of
    such flexions without breaking down. Only strength of will, a manifestation of spirit, could thus temporarily
    overcome the body’s fatigue and successfully control it.
    The student M. M., also from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest, was subjected to the following procedure.
    After everything else had been tried on him, including beating till his body became almost insensitive to further
    blows, he was forced one day to lie down on the floor in the middle of the room. Other students, chosen
    according to their degree of “banditry” (i. e., resistance), were forced to lie down on him, one after another, until
    in all there were seventeen — all those, in other words, who were in the process of unmasking in that cell at that
    time. On top of all then climbed the individual who was committee chief in the room. Under the pressure of all
    this weight the student could no longer control himself; the muscles of his abdomen gave way and everything
    that had been forbidden him to do over the toilet he did there in the cell.
    What followed enters directly into the domain of madness. Under the pretext that he had broken rules and
    dirtied the room, and that no washing of clothes is permitted outside a scheduled time, the poor student was
    ordered to clean his underwear by mouth. His refusal to submit to this command infuriated the committee chief
    so much that he grabbed a chunk of wood and crushed the student’s fingers beneath it, then trampled the student
    underfoot till he became unconscious. He then had water brought to restore consciousness — water which had
    been refused earlier for cleanliness. The student’s head was then knocked against floor and wall and he was
    dragged around the room by his feet until blood flowed out of his mouth freely. Finally he could no longer
    resist.
    In the face of such pain there can be no hero.
    The student A. O. of the Faculty of Theology, one of the most “fanatical” mystics in the cells of Pitesti, was
    forced to move his bowels into his mess-pan, then to receive his meal without being permitted to wash it. What
    he had to suffer until his resistance and abhorrence broke in him, is diflicult to describe. But in the end he had to
    yield and to eat everything in the dish.
    Prisoners were obliged to stand on their feet without so much as moving a muscle. They were forced to wipe the
    floor over and over for whole days at a time, carrying two, or sometimes three other prisoners “piggyback” as
    they pushed the cleaning rag.
    Heavily tortured were those students who, unable to endure any longer but also unwilling to yield, tried to
    commit suicide. Such attempts, however, were made almost impossible by preventive measures taken by the
    re-educators and the frequent inspections by O. D. C. C. committees and by the administration. Besides, there
    was practically no object with which to commit suicide. Still, some cases of its having been tried are on record.
    Those who failed in the attempt were tortured as were also those suspected of contemplating suicide.
    The student R. M. at the Polytechnical School of Bucharest had kept his spectacles in the cell as a result of his
    own honest mistake and because of the committee’s lack of attention. One day, as he was being beaten, they
    broke his glasses. R. was forced to pick up the pieces, under blows, and to reconstitute both lenses. Although he
    searched a long time, he could not find the last small piece. Accusing him of having hid it in order later to
    commit suicide, the student, Diaca, of the Faculty of Medicine of Iasi who was charged with his surveillance,
    beat him in such a manner that R. urinated blood. Nobody was troubled by this and no doctor was summoned to
    look after him.
    The student C. S. of the Faculty of Law of Cluj, endowed with an amazing capacity of resistance, finally came
    to realize that he could not hold out much longer and decided to commit suicide. But how? He could find
    nothing at hand. In desperation he ate a pound of soap kept under the bed for writing declarations! As he later
    revealed to me, even though the soap was made from petrol residue, he suffered not even the slightest intestinal
    upset!
    A student of the Faculty of Theology of Timisoara, N. V., after failing to die from slashing his wrists, thrust his
    head into the food barrel, hoping to die burnt from the hot meal. But this, too, failed, and at enormous cost to
    him. He was beaten until his lungs were dislodged, and when he shared the same cell with me five years later,
    he was still suffering from that painful infirmity. All because he failed to kill himself.
    Many were those who tried to cut their veins with a scrap of sheet iron found somewhere, or with wood chips,
    or pieces of glass, or tried to crush their skulls against walls, etc. There were also some who tried to sever their
    arteries with their own teeth. That is why every effort was made to prevent such “sabotaging” of the “campaign
    of unmasking. ”
    The student Gheorghe Serban, from the little town of Murfatlar, was arrested in Bucharest in 1948, condemned
    with a large number of others and sent to Pitesti where he was subjected to the usual unmaskings. One day,
    however, as he was taken out into the hall, he succeeded in ending his torment by jumping from the prison’s
    third floor down the stairwell. When those from whom he had escaped reached the ground floor in panic,
    Serban had passed into the other world, uncompromised. The measure taken by the administration to prevent
    such a thing happening again was to stretch wire nets between floors. At the same time surveillance inside the
    cells was intensified, and fresh inspections, this time made by prison guards under the supervision of the
    prison’s director, Dumitrescu, emptied the cells of everything that could possibly serve as a means of suicide.
    Endeavors to call the administration’s attention directly to their situation were made several times by those
    enduring the tortures, but the administration remained deaf to all complaints. Not only did it not respond as
    hoped, but on the contrary took harsher measures against those that petitioned. They were put through what was
    called a “supplementary unmasking. ” Some examples of this follow.
    The student A. R., who had performed a thousand flexions crouched over the toilet, following several weeks of
    tortures, and though knowing what was in store for him, one evening at closing time broke out from the second
    row where he was being supported by re-educators, and stepped out in front of Director Dumitrescu, who had
    just arrived to take the “counting. ” A. R. reported everything going on in the cells and requested Dumitrescu to
    intervene with his authority as director and order the tortures ended and the torturers punished. He also said that
    he personally did not intend to make any kind of unmasking, that he knew the reasons for his imprisonment –
    which he did not regret — and consequently he should be left in peace to serve his sentence out, to decide for
    himself what he thought detrimental to society.
    The director listened attentively, simulating complete surprise. He answered that he did not even suspect such
    things, such atrocities, were taking place. He could say this with effrontery because although there were some
    among the “unmasked” present who had been beaten by the director himself in Room Four, they could not
    speak for they were no longer their former selves. It was too late to do anything about it that evening but
    Dumitrescu promised to attend to this matter next day — which he did: he sent Turcanu into the cell to take
    revenge on A. R. for his indiscretion.
    Another student, U. S., taking advantage one day of the door’s being left unlocked by a careless guard, escaped
    from under the bludgeon and darted out into the hall intending to get to the main office or even the director’s
    office. But to his surprise, he collided just outside the door with the director himself! Dumitrescu had been
    looking through the peephole to check on what was going on inside the cell. The student requested him in
    strong terms to intervene in the cell and establish order, and demanded that he be taken before the political
    officer who was the real director of the prison. Taken aback, the director could not avoid saying something, so,
    to get rid of the angry student faster, promised to ask the officer to see him. The student had to get back in the
    cell, where he received appropriate punishment. The next day, called out early, he was taken not to the political
    officer but to Turcanu, who during the interrogation toyed with a sharp razor in his hands.
    “You told the director that if he would not excuse you from the unmaskings and take you to see the political
    officer, you’d do anything in your power to commit suicide. Do you have the courage for such an act? Look, I
    want to help you. Here is an or

  4. On December 16, 2010 at 9:50 am hoff2 said:

    The student had to get back in the
    cell, where he received appropriate punishment. The next day, called out early, he was taken not to the political
    officer but to Turcanu, who during the interrogation toyed with a sharp razor in his hands.
    “You told the director that if he would not excuse you from the unmaskings and take you to see the political
    officer, you’d do anything in your power to commit suicide. Do you have the courage for such an act? Look, I
    want to help you. Here is an ordinary razor. Take it and commit suicide. But here in front of me, now. ” And he
    stretched out his left hand, offering the razor.
    “A ray of hope engulfed me,” the student told me later in another Romanian Communist prison. “If I had gotten
    hold of that razor for even a second, I could have cut his throat. I could have found that much strength if I
    succeeded in catching him off guard, then I would have killed myself. But nothing I hoped for happened. The
    moment I reached out to take the razor, Turcanu pulled back his left hand and with his right struck me under the
    chin such a blow that I fell flattened to the cement floor. He was powerful as a bull. Then he jumped on me with
    both feet. How long this lasted I do not know, as I passed out during this part of the ‘interview. ‘ When they took
    me out of the bathroom — for all this took place there — three of my ribs were broken. The scar formed
    afterwards will remain with me to my grave; the broken ribs will permanently keep the imprint of Turcanu’s
    feet. ”
    And to convince me of this he had me touch the broken ribs under the thin yellow skin.
    Not only were these things all reported to the director, but the chief guards of the prison, Ciobanu and
    Mandruta, received innumerable verbal reports of such atrocities. Mandruta always swore and cursed and
    slammed the door as he left saying this was none of his business, while Ciobanu merely shrugged his shoulders
    and said nothing. Later, in Gherla prison, I shared a cell with Ciobanu’s father-in-law, but in telling him of these
    atrocities, he could not believe that his son-in-law had ever been a witness to them as he had never breathed a
    word at home about such things. During the two-year experiment at Pitesti, perhaps he had had to go through a
    “school of threatenings” to get the job at all, in the interior of the prison, and was afraid to tell of anything going
    on. But the guards, at any rate, were only the facade to conceal the real authors of this villainy, the politruks of
    the Communist Party.
    Resistance in prisons depended naturally on the factor of moral order. As long as he could retain
    self-confidence, the student defied his re-educators, though passively. I know several hundred of the students
    who passed through unmaskings at Pitesti, having spent years living with them in various prisons. I studied
    them under all aspects both before and after the unmaskings, and I hold the firm conviction that at least fifty of
    them would have stepped calmly before a firing squad, thus sealing their creed with the supreme sacrifice,
    before the Securitate arrest and investigation. Who is not familiar with the capacity for sacrifice of the
    Romanian youth in the war against Communism, willing to die, even after the Communist occupation, in
    resisting it? The Legionaries Puiu Constantin, Florescu, Spiru Obreja, Serban Secu, for example, who were
    executed on order of the Military Tribunal of Bucharest in 1950-51, knowing they were to be killed, refused to
    sign a petition of pardon presented by a special envoy from the Ministry of the Interior.
    Eighteen others arrested in the Fagaras Mountains had the same fate in the summer of 1958. During these eight
    years, all over the country, people were shot by the hundreds, with or without being sentenced, and died
    bravely. I knew before my own arrest many students who were members of resistance groups and fled to the
    hills, where they were pursued but fought the Securitate forces till they fell; few allowed themselves to be taken
    prisoner. But those who got to Pitesti, collapsed morally. What accounts for this change in behavior? Perhaps
    those who were still free to dispose of their own lives, preferred to die at the hands of the enemy; while those
    who were captured, finding themselves no longer free even to kill themselves, therefore collapsed.
    But the intensity of the drama and the terror that dominated this period will never be known.
    “What we lived through there,” said one student, whom I had known long before any arrests, and who had
    passed through unmaskings as one of the most fanatical, “surpasses what the human mind can imagine.
    Language is inadequate to completely convey what everyone of us would have to say, even if we could say it. ”
    Hungry, tortured, humiliated for weeks and months on end; sleepless, terrified, terrorized, struck by him who
    but an hour earlier had been his friend and brother in chains; forced in his turn, through the threatening of Satan,
    to become a torturer of others; without the slightest hope of escape; isolated from the world by a curtain of steel;
    brought to the edge of the grave but denied the privilege of dying — of such was comprised the calendar of a
    student subjected to this experiment of de-personalization. In short, he was subjected to the “ethics” of the
    Communist Party.
    Under such treatment, I believe no man could successfully resist. Let me give two examples pointing up the
    difference in reaction of two students under two investigations, one after arrest by the Securitate, the other later
    at Pitesti, during unmaskings.
    When being investigated, the student had, as did any other detainee, several elements in his favor: he knew he
    would be arrested, he knew the methods of the investigators, and he knew the Communist to be a foreign
    element, a stooge of the Bolsheviks, whom he must confront. In other words, this meant a confrontation
    between two forces, the one Romanian, the other the foreign element of occupation. Because the Securitate
    arrested large numbers of persons at one time, and space was limited, they could not always give individualized
    attention to each prisoner nor did this concern them; they knew that the Pitesti Experiment would take care of
    the details. Their main concern was to get a confession, true or false, as quickly as possible, and send him
    before the military judge for sentencing.
    The student Alupoaei, a former detainee of the Antoneseu regime, was arrested in the summer of 1948 and
    accused of subversive activities against Communism. He was investigated at the Iasi Securitate by officers
    Fischer and Pompilian, but despite all the torture to which he was subjected, they got no compromising
    declaration out of him. Their report to the Ministry of the Interior after several months of intensive investigation
    still was the same — they could not detect subversive activities by any youth organization in the Suceava region.
    But at Pitesti, after the regime of unmasking, Alupoaei told everything he knew, betrayed everything!
    Another student, Gh. Cucole from Constanta, was also arrested in the summer of 1948. He was interrogated by
    a long-time Communist, Campeanu, who had fought in the International Brigade in Spain and was now a
    colonel in the Ministry of the Interior. (He fell into disgrace later and was treated as he had treated others. )
    Cucole’s torturer was a Lieutenant Botea, a Bulgarian[1] waiter considered one of the most brutal and cruel men
    in the entire Communist police force. (Botea was later arrested himself. ) Cucole was kept in chains for months
    with only half a pound of bread and a cup of water for his daily food. Depositions by colleagues or friends who
    had been active with him were placed before him, but he denied them all. While he was incarcerated, his
    sufferings day after day were noted by a fellow prisoner, Major X, who told me about him at Aiud in 1951,
    speaking of him as of a hero. Cucole never did give the Securitate the confession they wanted, so he was finally
    condemned to prison on the basis of depositions from others. He was sent to Pitesti, and there he talked,
    revealing not only what he had done but also what he planned to do, whom he considered an enemy of the
    regime, and whom he suspected of subversive activity. As a result of his declarations, more than 60
    Macedonians were arrested in the Constanta region and in Bucharest. D., a student from Iasi, who was in the
    same cell, told me later that during Cucole’s unmasking he had to be wrapped three days and nights in wet
    sheets to keep him alive after the day-long tortures by Titus Leonida and Turcanu. I myself met him after the
    unmaskings, and I did not recognize him. Not only was he not the man he had been but something in his very
    mind was shaken.
    I do not think there was a single student who declared everything under the Securitate investigation. Everyone
    kept some secret, greater or smaller; but at Pitesti prison, no one could resist. The number of those arrested as a
    result of testimony given or extorted at Pitesti during the unmaskings was at least 3000!
    Was anything left unrevealed at Pitesti? Very little, and that only because it was known only to the individual
    under investigation. For if there existed the slightest suspicion that someone else knew the secret, the one being
    tortured hastened to tell it lest the other beat him to it and he be passed through unmaskings for the second or
    third time. Since students were usually active in groups, it was difficult to keep anything back when one knew
    that if the same system was being used in other prisons, a dossier would be compiled from declarations made by
    fellow students incarcerated in Aiud, or Gherla, or somewhere else. And no one coming to Pitesti from other
    prisons was ever able to warn the students or tell them what was happening in the other prisons, as new arrivals
    were isolated immediately; first, so that they could not transmit news from the outside world to those
    undergoing unmasking, and second, so that the new arrivals could not receive any kind of warning of what was
    in store for them before their turn came. Those who dared to conceal some detail, however trivial, were found
    out — a month, or a year later, — and had to pass a second or even a third time under the bludgeons of the
    torturers. And each time the unmasking was more Draconian because the individual had continued being a
    “bandit. ” Nothing that two or more knew could be kept secret, for each would tell it, having no way of knowing
    whether the other had already told it and had become in his turn an unmasker. An infernal cycle from which
    there was no escape!
    There is, for example, the case of student T. from Bucharest’s Faculty of Medicine. After he passed through
    unmaskings and had convinced the O. D. C. C. that he had told everything he knew, somebody from another
    room revealed facts he had withheld.
    He was put through a second unmasking and tortured almost to disfigurement. He finally admitted the facts he
    had concealed before, and added another detail. For this he was taken through a third unmasking, but this time
    only as a viewer of the torturing of others, being placed in “position. ” As he had been seated alone on the edge
    of the bunk bed, with no special attention paid to him, he took it upon himself to request the “watch” to call
    Turcanu in, for he had something to tell him. Turcanu came in but refused to listen. Then desperately T.
    implored him:
    “This is the time to listen to me. I can no longer stand it; I must speak to you right now. If you lose this
    opportunity, you will not get anything out of me even if you skin me alive with a razor. ”
    Turcanu naturally took advantage of this psychological moment and listened. T. told him everything, absolutely
    all that up to then he had managed to hide, and which was infinitely more revealing than what he had told in the
    two earlier unmaskings. Several years later he said, “I cannot understand what happened in my soul that I
    should have volunteered to talk that time, especially when I was sure the O. D. C. C. had come to the conclusion
    that I had already revealed everything. ”
    A second case was that of Teodoru, a medical student at Cluj. He was passed through unmasking, tortured, and
    considered “irrecoverable” even though he willingly did and said all that was expected of him. But when the
    unmaskings were over, and the terror of “re-education” had lost much of its virulence, Teodoru switched to the
    other extreme, becoming one of the most dangerous denouncers, with not the slightest excuse for this change of
    attitude, this strange new viciousness.
    And even stranger things happened, which might explain the numerous Moscow trials that resulted in the
    liquidation of all those considered Stalin’s personal enemies. Crimes were invented, not by investigators but by
    those being tortured by the investigators. A prisoner, hoping to be spared further torture by convincing his
    unmasker that he had revealed everything, the whole truth, would resort to lying, and invent things that could
    never have taken place, not even in his imagination.
    The Polytechnical student O. O., arrested for failing to denounce anyone during the first phase of his
    unmasking, invented and made up from bits and pieces an entire subversive organization into which he grouped,
    besides his own classmates, almost all the instructors, the tutors, lecturers, even a few professors, making
    himself, naturally, the leader. Many, fearing further torture at first, but later out of a new-found desire to
    “restructure and re-educate themselves in the new spirit” (in other words, sheer madness), tried to prove their
    “sincerity” by giving the names of their parents or relatives as members of an organization of their own.
    All verbal declarations were recorded on soap tablets and forwarded directly to the O. D. C. C. Special
    Investigations Office, where they were transcribed and all declarations from the beginning were screened,
    compared, and fine-combed to find any minute discrepancies in reports from two or more individuals relative to
    the same fact. If the screening turned up discrepancies of any importance to the Securitate, each prisoner
    involved was called in to the office, made to put down his declaration on paper and sign it, after which it was
    sent to the Ministry of the Interior through the political officer.
    As you can see, the Ministry had no official contact or concern with what went on at Pitesti; in fact, the
    information thus extorted was only incidental to the real purpose. For no matter how useful the students’
    revelations might become, there must be no let-up in the torment. The state of torture must continue for the
    simple reason that continuous physical (and resulting moral) terror is indispensable to the flawless functioning
    of conditioned reflexes reflexes that will go on functioning automatically long after the subject of the
    experiment has passed through the fire and become himself a torturer of others.
    1)
    The author uses “Bulgarian,” “Hungarian,” etc., to refer to the family background of an individual, even
    though he may have been born in Romania. This has been common practice in Romania — to distinguish
    ethnic origins.
    CHAPTER X
    THE STAGES
    “I, the undersigned bandit (Name and biographical data inserted here) unmask!”
    Thus began the “declaration” that was to take the student who consented to make it (and who could refuse?)
    down the road of degradation to an enforced, inhuman transformation of character inconceivable to a normal
    human being. Until this declaration was made, the student had somehow kept some part of his personality intact
    his soul proper was not irremediably affected, or so the unmaskers thought. He would not yet readily betray
    those whom he, though under torture, had managed to protect during the Securitate’s investigations.
    The real tragedy, however, began immediately following the “outer” unmasking, and the “prison activity. ” It
    was necessary in the project to repress any tendency to return to an anti-Marxist equilibrium, which was based
    on the following principles of life: faith in God, tradition and family; trust in the political personalities who led
    the anti-Communist resistance materially and morally; friendship; love in its usual worldly sense and love of
    mankind in general; and, finally, one’s own ego, with its own intimate life and its anxieties. Such, in fact, were
    the pillars sustaining the Romanian people, which was born Christian, you might say. There is no recorded
    historical date of a transition from an earlier faith to Christianity, as in the case of most European peoples.
    When the fusion of conquering Romans and vanquished Dacians was consummated, the resulting nation was
    both Christian and Romanian at the same time. From the moment of entering history to the present day, with
    very few periods of peace in a long chain of painful tribulations, the Romanian people defended equally their
    own independence as a nation and their Christian faith — a Latin island lost in a Slavic sea.
    Attacked throughout the centuries by all nations which it has had the misfortune to have as neighbors, Romania
    alone has never nourished any desire for conquest. Her struggles have been for defense, for inner living, for
    getting closer to God. For the Romanian, altar and plowed land blend together. When no ray of hope, of help,
    came from anywhere, the Romanian has knelt in front of the despoiled altar to invoke God’s help. Innumerable
    monasteries, retreats, and crosses set up throughout the countryside, at almost every crossroad, are proofs of the
    place God occupies in the life of the Romanian people. This faith constituted, and constitutes even today, one of
    the strongest supports of the resistance to Communism. Romanians have today gathered in the shadows of the
    altar, even though they know it to be the greatest of risks, whose consequences cannot be guessed at by one who
    has not actually lived today’s drama of our people.
    If the Communists have not bothered the Church officially, it is because they feared the consequences.
    Uprisings in the name of one’s faith, especially if supported by a nation in the throes of despair, are much more
    dangerous than those of a strictly social-economic nature. So out in the country, the Church was perforce
    allowed to function within certain limits, but such toleration inside the prison walls was out of the question. The
    churches of the old Aiud prison, for instance, were transformed into coal-bins (the Eastern Orthodox), oats-bins
    for horses (the Catholic) and a wood-shed (Protestant). The priests not only had no place to officiate, but they
    were even forbidden to hold services in the cells.
    In Pitesti prison the terror exceeded all limits, as this was the place where the prime guinea pigs, the students,
    were brought. The cruelest torments fell upon the heads of the “mystic” groups made up of the more intensely
    religious students, who had been first imprisoned by Antonescu following the so-called “rebellion” of Jan.
    21-24, 1941. Their numbers were later augmented with numerous freshly arrested students, particularly from
    the Faculties of Theology and Philosophy in Bucharest, Cluj and Timisoara Universities. This persecution of
    Christian students, in intensity, length of time and more particularly in method, perhaps surpassed that of the
    early Christian martyrs who died in the arenas on crosses or at the stake, in pits with wild beasts, or as human
    torches, giving up the ghost in a matter of minutes. In Pitesti, the martyrdom lasted for months, hour after hour.
    What heathen emperors had demanded of the martyrs renunciation of faith, denial of God and of Jesus — was
    forcibly induced in prisoners. A simple denial, a formal promise not to believe or pray or fight for this “false”
    faith, was not enough. It had to be accompanied by a whole set of proofs, including first of all the ridiculing of
    the Savior’s name by use of the most insulting epithets. Some accordingly alleged that Christ spent the first
    thirty years of His life in India learning to be a fakir; others said He was a quack, a cheat and speculator in the
    faith and superstition of the people, who were kept uneducated by the priests. Some denied His historical
    existence. Others presented Him is a utopian socialist revolutionary, initially animated by good intentions but in
    the end coveting the throne of Judea; they said His condemnation resulted from a power struggle between Him
    and leaders of the Hebrew people, who were subservient to and thus accomplices of the Romans! His morals
    were placed under the microscope, and Gospel references to Mary Magdalene interpreted to mean the
    relationship was one of worldly love. The Virgin Mary, His Mother, was labeled a woman of loose morals who
    deserved not sanctification but a prison sentence for adultery. And through it all, the Leninist slogan, “Christian
    superstition, the opiate of the people” was the constant theme.
    In order to extinguish the last trace of respect for holy things, ritual parodies of all Christian ceremonies were
    arranged, with students of theology compelled to modify prayer texts, substituting vulgar oaths for religious
    phrases. Holy Week and Easter were made occasions of particular vilification by the O. D. C. C.
    The “rehabilitated” were often obliged, if they did not proceed on their own initiative, to stage spiritual orgies
    ridiculing Jesus. I shall relate only one scene of many. It took place in the section occupied by those condemned
    to hard labor, at Easter 1950.
    “Christ’s robe,” as the students called it, was improvised from a few white shirts and bed sheets. Out of the soap
    used for inscribing declarations a masculine genital organ was made and the theology student chosen to play the
    part of Jesus was forced to hang it around his neck. He was compelled to walk about the room, receiving severe
    blows from broomsticks, to symbolize the road to Golgotha. He was finally stopped by the window. There the
    rest of the students had to file past him, making the sign of the cross and kissing the piece of soap, exclaiming,
    “I pray to your omnipotence, only true master of those who believe,” etc.
    There was only one, a youth named B., who refused to stoop to this sacrilege. He was only a high-school
    student, and although tortured for hours in front of the others in order to force him to do it, he stood firm.
    Finally it was the re-educators who gave up, but no one could find out what made them stop. This conduct was
    particularly strange, it being the first time the tormentors had stopped short of achieving complete obedience to
    their commands. Could it be that perhaps the tender age of the youth had aroused in their dry, and at the same
    time terrorized, souls, a trace of pity? If so, the tender age did not deter them from bludgeoning B. into
    unconsciousness several times.
    The individual who related this event to me was at the time sharing B’s cell, and he was himself a participating
    victim. I asked him how he felt when he saw that a man younger than himself and not having his ideological
    background could have the strength to refuse till the end.
    “At first, pity,” he said, “because of the way he was tortured; then a kind of anger seeing that he did not give in;
    and finally shame and contempt toward myself. At the moment I became aware of the implications of harboring
    these thoughts, I experienced a real shock of terror. If the person who had unmasked me, still in our cell, could
    have learned my thoughts at that moment, he would have ripped me to pieces. ”
    “How could he find out,” I asked, “if this was only a thought?”
    “All he had to do was to place me in the unmasking position and ask me to reveal my thoughts at the time B.
    was refusing. In the end, I am sure I would have told … ”
    Such travesties of this sort, some even more vile, were enacted in all cells Sunday after Sunday. Each religious
    holiday was an occasion for some novel profanation.
    Those who were undergoing unmaskings were watched closely especially in the evening, because they were
    then permitted to lie down in bed and might seek solace in their faith. A far-away look, prolonged staring at the
    ceiling, a look of serenity — any of these was considered sufficient indication of prayer, and he who was caught
    in such an attitude was brought back to reality by a powerful bludgeon on his ankle bones. Next morning the
    victim so surprised received from the committee his due.
    A simple trembling of the lips was considered the equivalent to praying aloud. The morning beating was
    mandatorily followed by a declaration made in front of all, in which the inmate in question had to admit he
    erred, that the “bandit” within him was not yet vanquished, that he had committed an unspeakable crime, and
    that he promised never even to think of praying again; and furthermore that if he should catch someone else
    seeming to commit the same crime of praying in bed, he would report him mercilessly and thus help rid himself
    of “banditism” sooner.
    All students were forced to deny and revile Christianity, whether they believed in God or not.
    The Church had to be denounced as an organization under whose mask of faith swindles were perpetrated, plots
    were hatched, extra-marital rendezvous were arranged with the priest’s cooperation, young girls were corrupted,
    women came to show off and men to seek bodies. Or the Church was described as the place where the fight
    against the Communist Party was organized, where, in the shadow of the holy icons, arrangements were made
    for the assassination of the leaders of the working people, etc. As there were no priests among the students
    imprisoned at Pitesti, the O. D. C. C. ‘s anger was directed against the sons of priests. Through their mouths
    must the Church be denigrated; they themselves must delineate their fathers in the blackest possible terms, so
    that the others would have this information from “eyewitnesses. ”
    Jokes and anecdotes about the clergy, that were making the rounds of Romanian villages, were now naturally
    given the stamp of authenticity. The priest had to be described as a drunkard, skirt-chaser, card player, and thief,
    contemptuous of the misery of the people (and especially the peasants), an inveterate liar who had sold out to
    the class of capitalist exploiters, had been an agent of the Nazis or of the former Securitate, and was in fact
    responsible for the complete breakdown of village morality.
    For all these epithets, proofs had to be found; whoever supplied the “proofs” had to sound convincing so that his
    revelations would lead to other unmaskings. Both those who made the required statements and those who
    directed the unmaskings knew that the testimony was absurd, but the more monstrous these inventions were, the
    more pleased were the unmaskers. Such lies made it impossible for those who told them to look parents or
    friends in the eye ever again, or step over the threshold of a church, if they ever regained their freedom. The
    memory of unmaskings would be a lingering torture after their liberation.
    The second principal element in the destruction of faith was denigration of the monastic life. Students were
    forced to say that they heard things “with their own ears,” and saw things “with their own eyes. ” Any monk
    being discussed had to have on his record at least several adulterous affairs in the villages near his monastery;
    the nuns several abortions! Among the stories told by a student from Moldavia, I shall mention the following
    monstrous lies. He said that at the request of a high dignitary (whose name escaped him!) a small lake in the
    neighborhood of a convent was drained. On the bottom were found several hundred skeletons of newborn
    infants, who had, of course, been drowned so as not to compromise the convent. All this was done with the
    connivance of the Mother Superior and the leading heads of the Church. If the whole affair was hushed up, it
    was because the hierarchy desired it! Nothing was done to stop this lustful life, in fact it was encouraged, and
    the only one to suffer was the individual who demanded an investigation!
    As to the monks, it was positively affirmed that they were all spies for secret American agencies, they would
    hide parachutists who came to commit acts of political and military sabotage; they used their monasteries as
    storage places for weapons to be used the moment war should break out; problems of faith concerned them not
    at all; persons wanted by the Securitate for anti-Communist activity were given food and shelter by the monks;
    all in all, the monks should be considered highway robbers rather than servants of the people.
    In order to make students bear witness to such things, a whole gamut of tortures was necessary. But in this way,
    the first stage of the inner unmasking, that of breaking away from God, was accomplished. Thus, the students
    were sufficiently prepared to go on to the second stage, the breakaway from tradition.
    The education of students, structured on everything they had already learned in the home, was based on the
    cultivation of a healthy rural tradition on the one hand, and a historical one on the other. The roots of the past
    were the foundation on which the Romanian people leaned in time of vicissitude and trial. Remembering the
    past of their nation, Romanians confront the trials of today with faith and hope for future freedom. Especially in
    rural environments one finds even today traditional conservatism so deeply rooted that it is the peasants or the
    peasants’ sons who give Moscovites the worst headaches.
    Coming from such a background, the students in colleges kept unaltered their rural culture and tradition. Their
    advanced education merely added the scientific and historical knowledge needed to bolster their convictions.
    Communist propaganda said that the majority of school children come from the middle and upper classes and
    that the schools, like other institutions, were unequivocally in the service of the ruling class. Previous to 1944,
    say the Communists, the school was a reactionary institution whose purpose was not to prepare and educate “the
    sons of the people,” but to prepare the recruits for the ruling class to assure continuity of the regime in power. If
    they thought it not feasible or desirable to denigrate some well-known representative of the intellectual world,
    they described him as a rare exception to the general rule.
    The following cliches about the academic system were repeated ad infinitum: “It was in the service of
    imperialism;” “It sowed discord among ethnic minorities; falsified history;” “It altered the student’s soul by a
    chauvinistic education which neglected every scientific criterion;” “It ideologically nourished hatred of the
    Russian people in the past, now hatred of Communism;” “It supported the Fascist war of 1941-44;” “It falsified
    the fact that the Czar helped in gaining our independence in 1877, presenting the opposite of the truth. ” (With
    regard to this last, no Romanian student was unfamiliar with the historical fact that it was the intervention of
    Bismarck that induced the Russians to withdraw from our Principalities[1] in 1880, and that, instead of being
    thankful for our help in the war against the Turks, they took away from us again the three counties in
    Bessarabia![2] The students also knew all too well that in 1924 Communist agents attempted an insurrection in
    the Romanian province of Bessarabia — the same Bessarabia that was to be kidnapped for the third time in
    1940, then again in 1944![3]
    The school was also reproached for infecting children with Christian mysticism, causing religious fanaticism
    and intolerance; for cultivating superstition in order to keep the people in the dark and thus afford reactionaries
    the opportunity to oppress the people more easily; and for “deforming history” to create “nationalism. ”
    Beginning with the elementary school teachers, and going all the way up to university professors, everything
    that contributed to the education of youth was “corrupt, sold out, immoral, and opportunistic. ” The main
    preoccupation of educators was not quality of education but their own careers, in particular their political
    careers, and the school was used as a jumping board from which to spring to more interesting and remunerative
    positions.
    Anecdotes were presented as fact, jokes were used as irrefutable argument. If, for instance, a story was told of a
    teacher “accepting a bribe” from a pupil for promoting him, it was implied that all teachers did the same thing.
    Those most blamed for “indoctrinating” students were, of course, the university professors. Naturally, explained
    the Communists, it was only because of such influential educators that there could possibly be such a large
    number of students who opposed the Communist Party and showed themselves enemies of the people and of
    scientific-realist-socialist progress!
    The attack on learning opened the way for attacks on the creative elements in art and literature. If the writers did
    not reflect “social reality” in their works, it was becausa their education had detached them from the real
    problems that had to be dealt with in literature. If poetry was symbolic, or folkish, or philosophical, the school
    was responsible for this also. If a great part of novelists’ creations had a nationalistic character, that proved the
    guilt of their teachers. Not even Eminescu,[4] whose memory the Communists did not dare to denigrate
    publicly, was exempt from such criticism.
    History also came under attack, especially that covering the monarchial period. The O. D. C. C. had high on its
    list for destruction all sentiment of loyalty to the monarchy. Of course, really damaging material was not
    lacking — the scandals of Carol II, his ten years of embezzlement of public funds, the murder of Codreanu and
    other officers of the Legion in prison, or the massacre en masse of Codreanu’s followers throughout the country
    on one night in 1939. [5] The Communists did not think it important to mention that before Carol Romania had
    two highly respected and beloved kings; Carol’s character and crimes were attributed to both. To further
    undermine loyalist sentiment, specious arguments were cited from Communist history to the glorification of
    Stalin.
    Up to this point, the trials which the student had to undergo following his outer unmasking (physical torture in
    particular), were somehow relatively impersonal, external forces, even when they touched on faith. But now
    came the most painful phase of all, and the decisive blow.
    The student had to renounce his own family, reviling them in such foul and hideous terms that it would be next
    to impossible ever to return to natural feelings toward them again.
    Although the most beautiful pages ever written have been in praise of a mother, at Pitesti the most offensive of
    words were uttered to degrade her name. The prime character which a student had to attribute to his mother
    during his unmasking was that of a prostitute; and since only a moral prostitute could give birth to a moral
    monster, all students before their unmaskings were, naturally, moral monsters. I shall give here, almost in his
    very words, the forced statement of a student, which he, with agony of the spirit, repeated for me more than two
    years after the frightful scene in a main-floor cell of the Pitesti prison, where the “unmasking of his family” took
    place.
    “I am the son of a fairly rich family in ____ ____. Of course the wealth amassed by my father is the fruit of
    embezzlement while he worked as a purchasing agent for the government. Having so much money at our
    disposal, we lived quite independent of one another, more so than you would imagine. My father, for instance,
    met a young woman who was married to a fellow government worker; he lived with her almost openly, sleeping
    at her place almost every night. Although he left the greater part of his earnings there, my mother did not object.
    On the contrary, she took advantage of the situation to find a friend for herself — no other than my father’s close
    associate. This was no secret to any of us, for before they retired alone, ofttimes they kissed in front of us and
    my father left them in peace, for he needed the freedom this afforded him to spend with his girl friend. My
    mother’s friend had a daughter of about my age whom I knew better after my mother entered into intimate
    relations with him; she also came to see us often. Encouraged by both my mother and her father, I courted the
    girl and she did not repulse me; on the contrary, she seemed to expect my advances. The same relationship
    developed between us as existed between my mother and her father, who both encouraged us in our sexual
    relations; they said it was only in this way that I could overcome my social inhibitions. Once engaged in this
    sort of life, I introduced a student friend of mine to my sister, and I started inviting him over more often. After a
    while, there was no need for my invitations, for my sister brought him over herself, developing a relationship
    with him similar to that of the others in our circle. As a matter of fact, influenced by what she saw at home, she
    asked me to find her a friend of mine who was more ‘virile. ‘ Oftentimes in our home orgies took place in which
    we all participated, exchanging roles and intermixing promiscuously in the dark. ” I cannot bring myself to put
    down on paper the rest of the “testimony” he had to give at the orders of Turcanu.
    When I asked him to try to explain to me why he said these things, he answered unhesitatingly, but with pain
    born of grief, that the only motivation was hope that it would mitigate his physical and moral suffering “in that
    hell. ”
    The father was likewise subjected to ridicule and opprobrium. The son’s degree of guilt was measured by the
    status, attitude, and the family from which the father came. Peasant parents were no exception; they had to be
    portrayed in most despicable terms so the son would be shown to have inherited the character and personality of
    the one responsible for his physical and moral existence.
    The father’s shortcomings were determined by his occupation. If he was a simple peasant, then he must have
    been the servant of the “boyar,” his informer, the denouncer of the other peasants who opposed exploitation. If
    he was a merchant, then he must have cheated on weight, selling cheap merchandise at high prices, failing to
    pay the clerks and laborers, beating them when they demanded their rights, or threatening to denounce them for
    Communist activity. If a teacher, he “falsified history,” persecuted workingmen’s sons, promoted students for
    bribes, made use of students as laborers in raising his cattle or in gardening, or making them work hard in
    difficult chores at his home so they could not study properly and were thus unable to compete with the sons of
    the wealthy. If he was a magistrate, he had sold justice for money and condemned workers to heavy sentences
    on false charges in order to suppress any social aspirations they might have had. When he presided at political
    trials, he was in league with the police and assisted in condemning unjustly at least several Communists. (The
    number of active Communists in all Romania had been only 822, according to the Party Secretary himself,
    Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej!) Students whose parents were army officers were given special attention. The
    slanders contained in Zaharia Stancu’s novel Barefoot or Eusebiu Camilar’s The Mist, were almost
    pathologically exaggerated in order to demonstrate the guilt of “the military in oppressing the working class and
    provoking war against the Soviet Union. ”
    Among students undergoing unmasking, there were a few, a little older than the others, who came from the
    ranks of the military. Having been purged from the army when the Russians occupied Romania and having no
    other means of livelihood, the more courageous went to college to prepare themselves for another profession. In
    their unmaskings they were forced to relate fabricated events so dreadful that they could scarcely have been
    envisioned by the imagination of a sick man. The artillery captain Coriolan Coifan, now an engineering student
    fallen under the bludgeon of the re-educators, told of orgies that took place on the Eastern Front, unimaginable
    pillaging, numberless assassinations, fantastic rapes, wanton arson of workers’ homes merely for the sadistic
    pleasure of seeing fires, and executions of women and children who were guiltless except of having been
    convinced Communists, “Stalin’s children. ”
    Blaming parents for their children’s faults, they tried to establish a “family culpability” complex to convince the
    student that he was but a victim of his elders, and thus hasten his breakdown. Here is an example to show how
    far they went:
    When the political prisoners were sent to the Canal for work, their free relatives were permitted to visit them
    and bring packages of food and clothing, for that supplied by the administration was inadequate. A former
    military man named Dorneanu, who as a youth had joined the cadres of the Legionary Movement where he
    received an education that was staunchly Christian, patriotic and anti-Communist, received his mother on her
    first visit to the Canal with the following greeting: “Get out of here, you whore; it is because of the upbringing I
    received at home that I am now at the Canal. I do not want to see you again. I have no mother!”
    Another student who had passed through Pitesti, Enachescu, derived a special pleasure, while at the Canal,
    whither he was sent following the unmaskings, in torturing his uncle, Pitigoi, a former National Peasant Party
    congressman, now himself also a slave-laborer. This the nephew did simply to demonstrate to the camp’s
    administration that he definitively had broken with his family and the reactionary bourgeois way of thinking.
    The misfortune of the poor ex-congressman was thus all the worse for having been put in the brigade whose
    boss happened to be his re-educated nephew!
    The degree of guilt ascribed to a parent was also determined by the “banditism” of which his imprisoned son
    was accused. The greater the contempt in which a student was held by the re-educators, the more he had to
    insult his parents, accusing them of heinous sins. The accusations had to be justified with “irrefutable” proofs,
    which oftentimes were so absurd as to have caused laughter anywhere but at Pitesti. Here is “the story about my
    father” as told by a high-school student who at the time of the unmaskings was no more than fifteen years old. It
    was told me by the boy himself in the prison at Gherla in July 1953.
    “My father,” he had said, “had a flour mill in X village in Muntenia; several peasants from neighboring villages
    worked at the mill, but none remained very long because my father replaced them frequently when they
    protested his failure to pay the wages agreed upon. In order to avoid being sued, he never signed contracts with
    them. He fed them from our leftovers, and mush from cornmeal like that used to feed hogs, which he raised
    nearby. They had to sleep in a stable, without any covering and on a thin layer of straw; worked 16-hour shifts
    with no rest other than the noon meal eaten in the mill at their working places. The work was very hard,
    consisting of unloading sacks, carrying them up to the hopper, and then loading the flour into freight cars or
    wagons. If father thought they were not working hard enough, he reduced the small wages they received; and if
    they protested, he beat them. When a worker threatened to sue him, he beat him unmercifully and denounced
    him to the gendarmes, accusing him of spreading Communist propaganda. The worker would be arrested and
    taken away. My father systematically cheated the peasants who brought in their grain to be milled. In order to
    get away with this, he made certain of the complicity of an older mill-hand by giving him his share of the
    ‘profits. ‘ Scales were so rigged that when weighing in the grain, they showed less, and when weighing flour out,
    they showed more, than the actual amount in the sacks. When an unusual amount of flour was stolen, sand was
    substituted to make up for the lost weight. Peasants knew they were being cheated, but could not oppose him,
    for he was on excellent terms with the mayor and other authorities, who refused to permit operation of any but
    my father’s mill in the village. Part of what my father stole went to the mayor and part to the gendarme chief; so
    if anyone complained, the matter went no further than the gendarmerie of the village. Because I was his only
    son and the heir to the mill, father began introducing me to the secrets of his occupation. He showed me how to
    rig the scale so it would read falsely, how to add sand to the flour, how to cheat in the process of drying grain to
    account for the moisture loss. ”
    After the boy related to me the story of his unmasking, I asked him how he could have fabricated such a story,
    for he said his father was guilty of none of the accusations he had invented.
    “From the moment I realized I could no longer resist,” he answered, “and that I too would have to tell about my
    father in the ‘unmasking of the family’s weaknesses,’ as the committee head in our room was proud to say, it was
    quite simple. You see, during my childhood I often went to the mill. In the evenings an old miller, whom I
    liked, told me stories, among them that of Prince Charming and the Giant. I learned from these stories how the
    Giant always tortured those he caught and put them to work in his mills; how he fed them and how he beat
    them. Thus it was quite easy for me to substitute my father for the bad giant, and tell the story as if it happened
    at our mill.
    “As for the ‘political’ slant, namely, that about denouncing his workers as Communists, or his arrangement with
    the gendarmes, I knew this before my arrest from the propaganda spread in villages by the agitators against the
    ‘well-to-do,’ the opponents of collectivization. The interesting part of it all is that in the same room with me
    were others who knew my father. None of them, not one, questioned my story. On the contrary, they affirmed
    that they knew these details, for their parents were among those cheated by my father.
    “Every one of us knew we were all lying. But if by lying we could escape torture, then lie we would! If
    someone dared say I was lying, he would not have had the freedom to denigrate his own parents, for either I or
    someone else would have unmasked his lie. Even when one fellow who knew my family became head of the
    committee and I related — at his request — more lies, he dared not interrupt me. Because when he made his
    unmasking, I was present and I heard everything he told about his parents — lies likewise. Thus we stuck
    together in lies and destroyed our souls only because we wanted to save our bodies. ”
    Each “confession” was “evaluated” by the re-education committee, whose members were now inflicting on
    others what they themselves had suffered a few months before, and were furthermore stimulated by a
    maddening fear lest they be condemned to pass through another unmasking, for any suspicion that they had
    been lenient in accepting a “confession” made too easily or without the maximum debasement of the person
    making it would be considered a grave relapse from their own state of “purification” and punished accordingly.
    When the committee was at last satisfied that the victim had done all that he could to defile his parents and
    himself with the vilest calumnies, to the truth of which he in his wretchedness would frantically swear, they
    judged him ready for the next lesson.
    The victim was now stimulated to revile and defame with repeated and invented lies the teachers and writers
    under whose influence he had matured, and especially the political thinkers and leaders whom he had revered
    and followed.
    Particular care was taken to befoul the reputation and character of three men of national prominence, two of
    whom were still alive, incarcerated in Communist prisons in which they would soon die, while the third, whose
    name the Communists most feared and liated, had at that time been dead for more than a decade. The three
    were: George Bratianu, who had been the head of the Liberal Dissident Party and was highly esteemed for
    patriotism and foresight;[6] Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party, on whom, in the time between
    the Russian occupation and his imprisonment, had been centered the hopes of all Romanians for eventual
    liberation from the Communists;[7] and Corneliu Z. Codreanu, the educator of an entire generation of young
    men, to whom, after he was murdered in 1938, his spirit was ever present: he still lives in the heart and soul of
    all whom he inspired by his teaching and example. [8]
    Each student, as part of his unmasking, had to give “lectures” in the most opprobrious and filthy terms about the
    men whom he had most venerated, accusing them of every conceivable vice and crime. Since the students were
    young and had only imperfect recollections of Romanian political history before their own experience began,
    the “lectures” were often ludicrous, containing accusations that were chronologically impossible or politically
    preposterous, based on a confusion of one man with another or of one event with another that happened years
    before or later.
    Since Codreanu, the founder of the Legion, had had a moral and spiritual influence that transcended his political
    leadership and endured, undiminished, after his death, and since the elite among the students had dedicated
    themselves to the principles and ideals of the Legion, all the old slanders that had been contrived by the leftist
    and crypto-Communist press in his lifetime were endlessly repeated and, if possible, improved upon, and his
    living followers who had taken refuge in the West were similarly traduced and “presented in their true light.
    “[9]
    In this unmasking, of course, everyone lied with a straight face and without the slightest trace of
    embarrassment. The lying not only served the purpose of Communist propaganda by heaping filth on the men
    who represented everything that was great and true in the culture arid history of the nation, leaving in the mind
    a void that would be filled by Soviet “internationalism,” but, more important for the purposes of the experiment,
    it made the victim habitually and almost automatically subordinate truth to the most monstrous and absurd
    falsehood. The victim, now accustomed to sinking ever deeper into the quagmire by a kind of conditioned
    reflex, and conscious that he is destroying himself, despises and hates himself for his submission to what he
    cannot resist. He has thus been made ready for the final disintegration of himself: his “autobiography. ”
    1)
    The autonomous principalities of Walachia and Moldavia were united in the person of their ruler when
    Alexander Cuza became Prince of both in 1859, but, at the insistence of the European powers, separate
    governments were maintained in the two principalities for some years thereafter. Romania became a kingdom
    in 1881.
    2)
    When Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877, Romania, although she had painful memories of the Russian
    occupation in 1853, which had been terminated only by Austrian protests and pressure, allied herself with
    Russia, permitted Russian troops to pass through her borders and base themselves on her territory, and sent
    into the field her army, under the command of Prince Charles. The Romanian troops compensated for the
    overconfidence and military ineptitude of the Russian forces, and thus made possible the Russian victory in
    1878. Romania recovered some territory from Turkey, but Russia demanded from her ally the retrocession of
    Bessarabia, which had been a part of Moldavia since 1856 and had a population that was almost entirely
    Romanian. The Great Powers, who were most interested in forcing Romania to repeal provisions in her
    Constitution that restricted the power of resident Jews to control the country by financial manipulation, moral
    corruption, and political infiltration, abandoned Romania, which had to yield reluctantly to Russian demands
    and cede part of her territory to the erstwhile ally whom she had saved, if not from ultimate defeat, certainly
    from a prolonged and difficult war. Even then, Russia delayed withdrawal of the troops that she had brought
    into the territory of her ally during the war, and her claims were not finally settled until 1884. The conduct of
    Russia at this time was such that the Prime Minister of Great Britain, although himself a Jew residing in
    England, felt constrained to remark that “in politics ingratitude is often the reward of the greatest services. ”
    3)
    Bessarabia was part of Moldavia since 1367. In the Sixteenth Century, Moldavia was subjugated by the
    Turks, who, in 1812, ceded Bessarabia to Russia. Southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia under the
    Treaty of Paris in 1856 and so became part of Romania, which, as has been described in the preceding note,
    was forced to cede the territory to Russia in 1878. After the Jews destroyed the Russian Empire in 1917-18,
    Bessarabia first declared itself independent as the Moldavian Republic and then reunited itself to Romania in
    1920. The Jews resident in Bessarabia and trained Bolsheviks brought in from the Soviet attempted a revolt in
    1924, but without success. In 1940, King Carol, ignoring the protests of the Legionary Movement, of many
    other patriots, and of his own army, supinely yielded to a Soviet demand and surrendered Bessarabia. The
    territory was regained by Romania in 1941 and remained a part of the nation until it was occupied by Soviet
    troops in 1944; it was formally ceded to the Soviet in 1947.
    4)
    Mihail (Michael) Eminescu, who was born in 1850 and died in 1889, has been compared to Byron, Heine, and
    Leopardi, and is generally regarded as the greatest of all Romanian poets. In his biography of Eminescu,
    Professor Miron Cristo-Loveanu says of him, “He unites and embodies the whole intellectual genius of his
    country. ” An English translation of some of his poems was published at London in 1930. The almost
    universal veneration accorded Eminescu by the Romanian people made it impolitic for the Bolsheviks to
    denigrate his memory openly.
    5)
    See Cronologie Legionara, Munich, 1953, p. 182, which records for the night of Sept. 21-22, 1939, the
    murder of 252 Legionaries throughout the country, a few from each county plus others from three detention
    camps and a military hospital. (Tr. )
    6)
    He was especially known and respected for his strenuous efforts to prevent King Carol’s capitulation to Soviet
    threats in 1940. He is not to be confused with his relative, Dino (Dinu) Bratianu, head of the Liberal Party,
    who promoted the treason that ended in unconditional surrender to the Soviet in 1944; he, too, died in a
    Communist prison. On the political history of Romania and the character of the men who were prominent in
    it, for good or evil, see Prince Sturdza’s The Suicide of Europe (cf. p. xxxv above).
    7)
    During the first years of the Soviet occupation, the young king was kept on the throne as a useful figurehead
    and there was a pretense that the occupation was temporary. Maniu was permitted to maintain an attitude of
    independence, and he was widely believed in Romania to have influence with the government of the United
    States, which, they fondly imagined, favored “democracy” and “self-determination of peoples,” as stated in
    the propaganda disseminated from Washington. Maniu himself may have entertained such illusions; he was
    elected to the Romanian Senate, arrested, given a theatrical imitation of a trial, and sentenced to imprisonment
    for twenty-five years. On Maniu’s character and career, see the work by Prince Sturdza cited above.
    8)
    On Codreanu, see above, p. xxxi, and the work by Prince Sturdza, in which his career and the activity of the
    Legion in the climacteric years of Romania’s history are recounted in detail. The original text of Prince
    Sturdza’s book contains some fine appreciations of Codreanu that are omitted in the heavily censored
    translation, but enough remains to illustrate the greatness of the man. (Tr. )
    9)
    One must remember that the young Legionaries who vilified Codreanu in their “unmasking” venerated him as
    the father of their highest ideals, so that their “lectures” were for them much more than lying defamation of a
    great man and made them guilty of an ultimate blasphemy. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XI
    THE DESTRUCTION OF PERSONALITY –
    “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY”
    The tactic adopted by the technicians who managed the unmaskings from the outside was to liquidate the
    opposition from periphery to center; in other words, to begin with the victim’s beliefs that were external to his
    ego and to proceed by calculated stages to the destruction of the inner man. When the student had “proved by
    deeds” that he had repudiated everything that had theretofore constituted his world and thought, he was made to
    repudiate himself by defaming himself. He had to compose an “autobiography” that proved that he had been
    brought to his present predicament by a “lack of inner character,” and moral perversity and mental sickness that
    had made him unreceptive to Communism.
    He had to begin his autobiography from the moment of his earliest recollections. The predominant theme had to
    be a negative one, and expressed in superlatives. Vices and deficiencies had to appear in his early years so that
    his faulty upbringing would form part of a consistent pattern. Contact with the outside world began in his
    elementary school, where every student must have been taught to steal, and to despise those poorer than
    himself, so that he would create for himself a superiority complex — a complex that later would make him
    susceptible to the reactionary doctrines of the idealist bourgeois criminals. Attending secondary school, he had
    necessarily to deepen his perversity and develop his egocentrism, love of money, and ambition to achieve social
    status rapidly by ambiguous means, the first of which was to incriminate others in order to court the good will
    of the professors, the possessors of “power. ”
    The educators, of course, were engaged in an illicit traffic in influence, granting special favors to students
    whose parents returned the favor by augmenting the social position of teachers. The rotten environment in
    which the student was reared also had to lead him necessarily into frequenting establishments which were
    “officially” offlimits to all students, but which actually were open to those with the money to pay but closed to
    sons of workers or the poor.
    The literature one read in school (and the students had to cite specific books) could not be anything but a police
    novel, pornographic literature, the tendentious novel written to aggravate the feeling of hatred toward workers
    and defenders of the proletarian class. Lastly, movies of the gangster type had to be mentioned, or of frivolous
    adventure, or films playing up banditry, the heroes of which became idols and models of these students.
    Naturally, the result of such an environment led one into the kind of politics natural to Romanian life between
    the two wars, namely (as characterized by the Communists) one of dishonor, corruption, thievery, blackmail
    and political assassination. One also developed a disdain toward inferiors, and exercised flattery toward
    superiors, with the sole aim that of climbing socially. The principal purpose was to become wealthy through
    exploitation of the working class.
    Now, in order to illustrate for his listeners as graphically as possible the moral decadence of his background, the
    student had to attribute to himself all the possible sins of that environment and claim he had committed them,
    including all imaginable perversions. His character included without exception all the deformed aspects of man,
    everything psychopathology considers abnormal. Whoever would not recognize every sin and vice as his own
    only proved he was not yet permeated with the true meaning of “unmasking,” and those in charge of his
    “re-education” missed no opportunity to remind him of this with their bludgeons.
    Finally, he saw the only thing to do was admit those vices were in him and tell about them in detail. Pederasty,
    incest, masturbation, every depravity a student had read about or heard of as practiced anywhere on earth, all
    were described by him as his own actions, bestiality (intercourse with animals) not being excluded. In this way
    the student was forced to wallow in a quagmire of filth to its very dregs, as if some Satanic force had assumed
    mastery over him, ordering him to burden his soul with everything which had in the past roused in him the
    profoundest revulsion.
    This imposition of self-degradation became a sort of psychic hysteria that at a given moment seemed to fuse the
    re-educator’s command with a desire for self-destruction in the re-educated. By injecting gradually into the
    victim’s subconscious information different from what he had always accepted as real and true, by altering and
    constantly deprecating existing reality and substituting for it a fictitious image, the re-educator at last achieved
    the final purpose of the unmasking: to make the lie so real to the victim that he would forget what had formerly
    for him made sense. His chaotic mental state and the unreal coordinates along which his consciousness moved
    throughout the months of torture turned lies into truth and truth into lies, much as the body gradually accustoms
    itself to narcotic poisons and develops a dependence on them.
    As long as his nervous system responded to only rational commands, the student could maintain a normal line
    of behavior. But the moment fear altered this subordination, his nervous system became his mind’s greatest
    enemy. Any kind of reaction was possible when the entire organism was set quivering, as if touched by fire, by
    the appearance of the bludgeon, an instrument which attained apocalyptic proportions in the tormented memory
    of the sufferer. And if natural reticence and dignity endeavored still to hide something in his inner self, his
    nervous system betrayed him unequivocally. It was at this moment the fusion took place, the hoped-for result of
    all the planning by the experimenters: the complete reversal, for an indeterminate time, of the values in which
    the student had always believed.
    From then on for an indefinite period, the student would see the world as a god with two faces; the first, which
    he had thought was real was now become unreal; the second, fantastic and ugly beyond any previous
    imaginings, now had become real, obsessively and painstakingly so, even though deep down within him a
    stifled warning might still question its authenticity. And the impossible and the absurd, gradually taking on the
    semblance of actuality in his consciousness, became the sole standard of value in the student’s thinking. The
    artificial reality step by step displaced every trace of truth from previously verified fact.
    But who can fathom the bottomless depths of man’s soul? Who knows but that the life of one’s past, stubbornly
    resisting annihilation, may not take refuge somewhere in the depths of the subconscious, while the lie,
    becoming more and more dominant as truth is denied, invades the entire consciousness of the individual, who
    finally accepts it as a biological necessity for survival? Whatever the answer to this question, all the students
    who revealed their drama to me said that even when they believed the lies, they could still feel a vague anxiety,
    a sort of warning from the subconscious that disturbed the smooth functioning of the new order, like a ghostly
    intimation that something was not in its proper place. [1] It may be that the ego, man’s inner self, though
    subordinated by the biological laws of self-preservation and displaced by an alien consciousness, may encyst
    itself down deep, to remain dormant until outside conditions change and the enclosing cyst is dissolved by
    returning normalcy.
    So long as the danger persisted, however, the artificially induced consciousness was supreme, and any
    suggestion of doubt that might come from the subconscious was blocked by fear of physical suffering. Fear,
    deception and pain pushed to the maximum, become allies in psychopathic states, and make man his own
    enemy, making him frantically repress and strangle his own mind and soul to keep his tormented body alive.
    When the victim had become a “new man” and mentally healthy by Communist standards, he had to give proof
    of his regeneration. It was not sufficient to invent the foulest lies about one’s dearest friends; it was necessary to
    demonstrate one’s rehabilitation by physical action, by striking every friend who could be brought before one.
    As the unmasking progressed, the punishments became increasingly harsh as a constant reminder

  5. On December 16, 2010 at 9:51 am hoff2 said:

    As the unmasking progressed, the punishments became increasingly harsh as a constant reminder that there was
    no escape. The victim had, of course, disclosed in the first stage the names of all his friends, both those with
    whom his friendship dated from his childhood and student days and those whom he had come to know and like
    in prison. Every one of these individuals then within the walls of the prison was brought in for his unmasking,
    and he was required to strike each of them in the face and in turn be struck by them.
    By such re-education through infinite torment and the destruction of his own personality, a man — or rather the
    physical husk of him animated by an alien consciousness — was eventually graduated to become a teacher in his
    turn, and to re-educate others. Then he was sent with several re-educated companions into the cells of prisoners
    newly brought to Pitesti to greet with feigned comradeship his old friends and to form, with consummate
    hypocrisy, “friendships” with men whom he had not met or known well before; he would thus gain the
    confidence of all and extract from each of his future victims every bit of information that could be used when
    the time came for their unmasking. Only when he and his companions had learned everything that they could in
    this way were they allowed to produce hidden cudgels and fall upon the startled and thunder-struck victims to
    begin their re-education and to preside over their unmasking with a ferocity stimulated by the awareness that if
    he gave the slightest sign of leniency or pity, he would be charged with having relapsed from his new
    “purification” and be condemned to pass again through the whole curriculum of re-education and unmasking.
    Could anyone escape from that ultimate degradation and dehumanization? No, no one — no one at all, except
    those who died during tortures, killed by an unskillful blow or by the internal hemorrhages that not infrequently
    followed kicks in the stomach or abdomen. Let me mention a few of those who escaped in this manner.
    Bogdanovici, who had been the friend and even the collaborator of Turcanu in the period of “rehabilitation
    through conviction,” in the next phase died by the boot of Turcanu himself. The diagnosis by the prison
    infirmary: death by acute dysentery! Actually his “dysentery” was a rupture of the abdominal arteries, for
    Bogdanovici died eliminating all his blood through his bowels.
    Gafencu, a student from Iasi, who had been imprisoned continuously from the time of Antonescu,[2] and who
    was regarded as a leader of the “mystics,” perished in the same way.
    A chemistry student, Cantemir, also from Iasi, absolutely refused to speak evil of anyone in the very first phase
    of his unmasking, and was murdered in his cell by his overly enthusiastic re-educators and thus spared all that
    he would have had subsequently to endure.
    So far as I was told, about fifteen victims escaped the final stages of unmasking in this way. The re-educators
    were formally ordered to avoid killing, but when they did kill one of their victims, they were merely warned not
    to be so careless in the future, and were usually promoted, for the zeal that had caused death was accepted as a
    proof of their successful “purification” and complete alignment with the new morality. For some reason, the
    majority of the killers came from the ranks of the “mushroom” resistance organizations that were formed
    spontaneously soon after the Soviet occupation by small groups of students who had previously held themselves
    aloof from political concerns and ideological commitments. At least two of them felt remorse after murdering a
    fellow prisoner, and one became violently insane.
    An apparent anomaly in the behavior of the inquisitors was their treatment of persons sick with tuberculosis or a
    comparable disease. They were exempted from beatings, if they agreed to “unmask” without them, and in order
    to convince them that it was best not to refuse, they were usually brought into cells where violent unmaskings
    were in progress and forced to witness the suffering of the victims. If they then refused to co-operate in their
    re-education, they were subjected to the same treatment as the others, but they were all given a chance to escape
    the prolonged agony of body, and the majority preferred to take it. Of them, only the outer unmasking was
    required, that is, the one that elicited information useful to the Securitate and the unmaskers.
    The demoralizing effect of even this limited unmasking, however, intensified their illness as much as the lack of
    medicine, adequate food, and wholesome air. Since persons suffering from consumptive diseases were not
    likely to be useful to the experimenters, not much emphasis was placed on their re-education. It was easier just
    to let them die slowly, consumed by disease and despair.
    Every student who passed through the re-education had his own story and his own burden of guilt. The most
    singular aspect of the Pitesti experiment was its uniform success in converting the victim into a persecutor and
    tormentor of other victims, and this result poses for us one of the most difficult and unusual
    ethico-psychological problems. If we are to understand it, we must study the techniques of re-education in
    greater detail.
    1)
    It should be remembered that the author, naturally, was able to interview only persons who recovered from
    the “unmasking” far enough, at least, to be willing and able to describe their experience. (Tr. )
    2)
    General Ion Antonescu, who became the head of the government formed by the Legionary Movement after
    the flight of King Carol in September 1940. In January 1941, by an act of consummate treachery, he carried
    out a coup d’etat against his own government and tried to destroy, by mass arrests and executions, the Legion
    that had put him in power. (He was eventually kidnapped and murdered by the Bolsheviks whose cause he
    had unwittingly served so well. ) Gafencu, therefore, had been in prison almost ten years when death released
    him. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XII
    THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PREPARATION
    It would be untrue to say that the unmaskings came upon the students all of a sudden and without warning.
    There were indications of what was to come, none of which foretold just what would happen, but which
    psychologically laid the groundwork by weakening resistance and creating apprehension. In this preparatory
    stage, the role played by the prison administration was of the utmost importance. Well ahead of the time that the
    trained shock groups were introduced into the experiment, the suggestive method was used by guards or by
    director Dumitrescu himself. The students were led to believe that something monstrous was happening,
    something was hanging over their heads that none could escape because it was inevitable.
    All students knew that “something” was going on; even though the rooms in which unmaskings were gradually
    taking place were isolated from the prisoners’ cells, stifled screams, groans and shrieks could occasionally be
    heard. Nobody could learn whence they came; no one could find out what was happening. Little by little, the
    conviction grew within each student that eventually his turn would come. This waiting, this nerve-wracking
    uncertainty, was deliberately induced on orders of the political director.
    Sergeant Georgescu, an exemplar of unmatched brutality among the guards at Pitesti, took care, every time he
    had the opportunity, to give the prisoners grounds for anxiety.
    “You bandit, I beat you, but I also feed you. But just you wait, and see what is in store for you after while … ”
    And he would point in the direction from which the groans could be heard. All this contributed to increased
    tensions, of course, and is well summed up by the following account by a student who was among the first to
    undergo unmaskings in the series that began on Dec. 6, 1949:
    “We expected the outbreak while under a dramatic tension. We had no fear in the usual sense for we knew we
    could expect anything from the Communists even before we were brought to Pitesti. Most of us in my cell were
    prepared to go through any kind of suffering; we were so sure we would not break down! But, still, we were
    fearful, with a strange uneasiness. We did not know just how they would do it; we could not guess the day it
    would all start, or who the torturers would be. And then it seemed that we wished, were even impatient, to go
    through the coming trial, whatever it might be.
    “The climax came, however, when we least expected it, and what was more tragic, from those we least
    suspected capable of such treachery. ”
    The tactic of prolonged anxiety followed by total surprise and the shock of what could not have been anticipated
    or imagined was always used, and it never failed.
    There was another psychological factor that prepared the destined victims for what was to happen. The great
    majority of them were oppressed by an unexplainable sense of resignation that seemed to create a climate for
    accepting any kind of torture as a sort of deserved punishment for some imaginary sin. Not one among the
    students who talked to me about this could identify the source of that feeling. One, who had a thorough medical
    training, attributed it to physical weakness from insufficient food combined with a subconscious conviction that
    resistance was doomed to failure from the start. Without their realizing it, the students were going through a
    kind of transition from the world they had known into one in which life itself was of minimal importance, an
    expendable accessory.
    The final element was the shock of utter surprise when the victims found themselves in the midst of their
    unmaskers at the critical moment when the attack was suddertly unleashed. The unbelievable shock probably
    created in them a state of quasi-hypnosis.
    CHAPTER XIII
    VERIFYING THE METHOD
    The length of time it took a student to become “rehabilitated” varied from case to case. There were some,
    though these were the fewest, who gave in after only a few days. Others resisted three or four weeks. But for the
    most of them it required two or three, or even four months.
    Once the student had passed through the whole unmasking, he became a docile, pathologically fearful creature,
    willing and even eager to carry out the most fantastic orders. To verify the degree of his re-education, he was
    sent, flanked, naturally, by someone a little more “verified,” to participate in the unmaskings of former
    colleagues in other cells. What tortures he had undergone he now must apply to others in order to demonstrate
    “by deeds” that he had indeed broken with the past.
    Not everyone among the re-educated was charged at once with the re-education of others. In order to qualify as
    a “pedagogue,” the student had to meet certain conditions. The students who were eventually to direct the
    re-education of others were chosen at the start of the unmaskings, and were slated to work on fellow members
    of their own category[1] when the time came. But those whose past was too strongly anti-Communist, were
    denied the privilege of becoming teachers even after they had completed their pedagogic training. Turcanu
    would give them the following explanation:
    “I know my merchandise; the bandit within you will never be cured. You are encysted within yourself and only
    pretend to be re-educated; but in your subconscious you await the moment when you can go back to what I took
    you away from. You will never be able to rid yourselves of the sinful concepts that poisoned your soul. In spite
    of what you now appear to profess, you still believe in that other, maybe contrary to your will … ”
    Although this statement later proved to be correct in many cases, it was designed to excite craving for the office
    of pedagogue; for paradoxically, it was from the most ardently anti-Communist students that Turcanu
    eventually chose the “pedagogues” who turned out to be the most cruel of all the enforcers of the unmaskings.
    True, the majority of them are no longer alive, some having died in later years as a result of injuries or maladies
    contracted during their own unmaskings, some having been shot when their existence became inconvenient and
    they were no longer useful. Here are some examples:
    A long time after unmaskings were dropped from the prison routine, as I was walking one day toward the
    washroom with a whole group of detainees in Gherla prison, I noticed on the body of a youth ahead of me red,
    hideous scars like vertical furrows, up and down his back. I asked a student whom I had known earlier whether
    he knew the cause of that strange deformation. He replied: “That is Cornel Pop, who was a fifth-year student in
    medicine at Cluj. The marks on his back were left by unmaskings. He was among those pressed the hardest, for
    he was one of the main hopes of the group of which he was a member. ” The speaker’s face was convulsed with
    sadness mixed with fear. Even though he was a run-of-the-mill prisoner, any reference to Pitesti made him
    tremble. Cornel Pop was considered in Gherla prison as one of the most dangerous spies and denouncers used
    by the director, Goiciu, especially among prisoners of Macedonian origin; for Pop had had a particular fondness
    for them before his arrest, and had formed friendships which he now exploited for the benefit of the
    Communists. The educators had completely converted him. First a victim and then one of the most savage of
    sadists, his usefulness was eventually exhausted, and he was shot after a mock trial before a Communist
    military tribunal.
    Similarly infamous for their complete conversion and zeal as re-educators were:
    Constantin Juberian, also from Cluj; law student; shared the same fate as Pop, after same trial;
    Nuti (Ion?) Patrascanu, from Constanta; student in medicine at Bucharest; either disappeared or still in prison;
    Ion Bucoveanu, from Bucharest; fifth-year student in construction engineering; freed;
    Coriolan Coifan, from Turnu-Severin; former artillery officer, later student in construction engineering; famed
    for the vigor and accurate aim of the kicks in the stomach he administered to his pupils;
    Eugen Magirescu, student in education at Iasi; perhaps one of the most tortured of students during unmasking;
    today probably dead.
    Diaca, student in medicine at Iasi; in the habit of boasting that he was criminal by nature, but actually very
    much occupied with problems of higher mathematics; often imputed to himself the commission of crimes,
    maybe real, maybe invented. He did beat many prisoners so badly that they urinated blood; freed, he later was
    arrested anew and sentenced to 25 years.
    Hentes, a high school student from Targu-Mures who underwent his unmasking at Gherla; together with
    Ludovic Reck, former secretary of the Communist Youth in Transylvania and an agent of the Securitate during
    the Antonescu regime, he killed the former Socialist congressman Flueras in June 1953 in a ground-floor cell of
    the Gherla prison by beating him with sacks filled with sand. Flueras was about 70 years old.
    Florin Popescu, from Pitesti, who specialized in torturing the floor sweepers, whom he forced to kneel on
    walnut shells, or, lacking these, on sharp grains of sand, whenever it seemed to him that the floors weren’t
    scrubbed well enough.
    This transformation into torturers seems explicable in the case of those who had no clearly defined attitudes at
    the time of their arrest, and who quickly gave in during unmaskings; but what can explain such a total change in
    those who at first most tenaciously resisted? To what can be attributed their obvious malice and malignancy
    after they took charge of unmasking others, especially if they had not been made chairman of an unmasking
    committee or even accepted into the O. D. C. C. ?
    1)See above, p. 29f.
    CHAPTER XIV
    “PROFITABLE” USE OF TIME
    The relationship of “unmasked” students to the “patron” O. D. C. C. is not clear. Not everyone considered
    re-educated became a member of O. D. C. C. as a matter of course; in fact, only a very small number were
    chosen by Turcanu and approved by his unseen superiors. The exact number of those considering themselves
    members could not be learned. Supposedly it did not exceed 50 or 60 out of a total of more than 1,000
    re-educated students. It was from these approved “joiners” that committee leaders were selected to direct
    unmaskings.
    As the number of re-educated grew, using all of them in unmaskings became of course more difficult.
    Everything possible was done to ensure that each participated in at least one such operation, in order to confirm
    his disintegration into the new state. There were, on the other hand, always the zealots who carried the load, and
    were taken from cell to cell to begin their work anew.
    The rest of the re-educated students passed their days according to the established program. Usually the
    program came from “above,” namely from the directorate of the O. D. C. C., but many times it was left to the
    discretion of cell committees, the leadership being confident that its underlings understood very well what was
    permitted and what was not.
    Topics for discussion, once selected, were often assigned to a student to confirm his degradation, but there were
    plenty of volunteers who offered to speak on “agreed upon” subjects out of a desire to put to sleep any
    suspicions the committee might entertain. In this manner were organized short theatrical productions in which
    the old order, or organizations of which the “creators” were former members, were maligned. Poetry, and
    particularly the epigram, was employed in developing the topics selected by the committee. Out of these efforts
    came a collection of verses, entitled “The Red Notebook,” to which several students over a period of three years
    contributed their work. The student Sergiu Mandinescu, a quite talented youth, had charge of editing the work,
    which was finally presented to the political officer of the Gherla prison, Avadanei, who, in addition to torturing
    prisoners, busied himself with being a “patron of the arts. ” The collection, as was to be expected, contained
    lavish praise of the Communist Party and its early underground fighters; laudatory poems about machinery in
    factories; and odes on the creative nature of prison life which “forged new men. ”
    Educational discussions were held based on materials prepared by the prison’s directorate and by O. D. C. C.
    members. In these, plans of action for further unmaskings were worked out and various reports of “in the field”
    leaders of unmaskings were analyzed. During these “analysis meetings” were scrutinized also the written
    declarations of those subjected to torture, especially those concerning the outer unmasking; if found adequate,
    they were sent every month to the Ministry of the Interior by special courier.
    The fulfillment of this program was supervised by members of the O. D. C. C., a watchful eye being particularly
    kept on things which might prove symbolic, resulting sometimes in quite preposterous situations. Here is an
    example:
    One afternoon a student began humming a popular tune of the 1940′s. From the whole song, I here give only the
    refrain:
    “But I cannot, and slowly pass the years
    Waiting for the buckeyes to bloom again … ”
    Just a few common words. But back in 1947 the Romanians had modified the last line, substituting “Waiting for
    the Americans to arrive. ” Doubtless our music lover was only humming a tune without thought for the
    substituted verse, but someone who heard him shouted, “Unmask!” This was the term used to announce you had
    something to say about yourself or someone else. At once, everybody had to stop what he was doing and listen.
    “The bandit X sang a song with a hidden meaning; he cannot forget what he was; and he awaits the Americans
    to take revenge on the re-educators. ” The student in question, surprised, could not but admit that the bandit
    within him had not yet disappeared and that he was guilty and deserving of stringent punishment!
    Any slackening in attention to “the new nature” was taken care of by controlling the rhythm of the unmaskings.
    When the effect was at a low ebb, those who were still in their own cells were sent either to other cells where
    unmaskings were being started, or into cells where the newly arrived were being held. Here they were required
    to act as “confidence men” and obtain all the information they could from the newcomers, which could be used
    later when the cudgels were brought out and the re-education began.
    CHAPTER XV
    AMPLIFICATION OF THE EXPERIMENT
    After such preparation and under such pressure, Pavlov’s conditioned reflexes worked perfectly.
    The students to be used as the “shock group” in cells whose inmates were to undergo unmasking were selected
    by the committee because, through their previous testimony, they were known to have close friends among the
    new group and could more easily elicit information to be used a couple of weeks later to intensify the effect of
    surprise at the moment of unleashing the unmasking. Following this dramatic moment of shock, Turcanu would
    appear, raise his cap, deliver his discourse, and at a signal, set off the lightning barrage of bludgeons on the
    thunderstruck victims.
    One cycle was closed, a new one opened. Those who had been tortured were now torturing those who in their
    turn were being trained to torture others. This rhythm increased as the number of trainees increased, and the
    experiment was extended from Pitesti to other Romanian prisons.
    By the time the amplification was decided upon, the Ministry of the Interior was already sending political
    prisoners to the slave labor camps to be worked to death in digging a navigable canal that would connect the
    Danube to the Black Sea. The contribution that students could make to this extermination process looked
    promising. The December 1949 cycle of mass unmaskings did not provide enough robots to satisfy the demands
    of the canal administration. This was mainly because Pitesti had to retain the old trainers to unmask the
    increasing numbers being sent there from military tribunals all over the country. The tempo of the unmaskings
    was therefore stepped up rapidly to satisfy the increased demands at the canal. But also, the process itself was
    being speeded up, as the directors found they could skip the two weeks of psychological preconditioning
    usually given the trainees before the unmasking was initiated. Better results were obtained, they found, by
    plunging the victims directly into unmasking, thus preventing information from the outside being circulated
    inside their cell. So when a new group of students arrived, it was sent directly into unmaskings the moment after
    it was duly registered on the administration’s books.
    The group of students transported from Cluj, mostly from the Law School, may be cited as an example. They
    were unloaded into the prison early in July 1950, among them several students whom I met later — Inocentiu
    Glodeanu, Silviu Suciu, Hosu, Pitea, and others. They were taken to Hospital Room Four, not given any time to
    rest, or even for the “shock group” to elicit information; they reacted violently and fought for hours, but finally
    were overpowered by the much larger number of re-educators who imposed the norm of the new “ethics,”
    employing the usual methods of torture to illustrate its validity. Of the four victims I came to know well, three
    had sustained permanent damage to their lungs.
    Because of this increased tempo of unmaskings, some errors were bound to be made in screening detainees for
    transport to Pitesti. Thus it happened that several youths who were not even students arrived. One had been an
    “occasional” student named Opris from the slums of Bucharest, about 20 years old and by occupation a
    pickpocket. He had been arrested trying to slip across the border — probably because the Romanian people had
    become so poor that his occupation no longer paid! His infraction was considered political and Opris landed at
    Jilava, being put in the same cell I used to have, No. 23 in the second section, in the fall of 1949. Here, he
    represented himself as a congressman’s son implicated in an anti-Communist organization, but actually he was
    busy supplying information to Director Maromet. He was tried, then sent to serve his sentence at Pitesti among
    the students. He went through the usual unmaskings, but what was he to tell? He “unmasked” his real
    occupation in the first session, even before being beaten. So he was compelled to demonstrate how he plied his
    trade, being presented as a “victim of bourgeois education. ”
    Strange also was the inclusion of lawyer D. among students, for his age precluded a mistake and the Securitate
    had his complete dossier anyway. He was arrested under suspicion of being a member of a resistance group led
    by Colonel Arsenescu; and he was not brought to trial, but only sentenced to 10 years — for defiance of
    authority! Perhaps the Securitate sent him to Pitesti hoping to get more information from him via the Pitesti
    experiment than they had been able to obtain through the extreme rigor of normal investigative methods.
    The same thing happened to Eugen Bolfosu, the engineer, who was tried by the Military Tribunal of Bucharest
    along with a group of students from the Polytechnical School. By some coincidence, I traveled in the same
    prison van with him from Pitesti to Aiud in the winter of 1951; but even though the trip took two days to cover
    the couple of hundred miles because, contrary to habit, the van stopped at various provincial prisons for
    “pickups”, Bolfosu uttered not more than three words the whole time, and these only when questioned. Once
    arrived at Aiud, he was hastily isolated because he had been brought from Pitesti prison. The political officer
    visited him several times, but whether or not he said any more than while being transported I do not know. He
    did appear three days later, but his silence was even more pronounced (if this was possible) three months later
    when I met him in the workshop.
    A high school student from Constanta was also sent to Pitesti by mistake, and his subsequent transfer to Aiud
    was also strange, as high school students were usually not sent there either. He, like the others from Pitesti,
    would not speak to anyone about what happened there, even though there was considerable freedom to talk in
    the workshop in Aiud.
    Much later, I found out one reason for such reticence: Turcanu had given instructions to all those transferred
    from Pitesti to Aiud to get in touch with the political officer at once and tell him anything that might be useful
    later on in unmaskings of the “old ones” (politicians of the traditional political parties, and older Legionaries)
    which he himself was scheduled to initiate at Aiud, where he thought he would soon be transferred. He
    cautioned them that if they talked, they would face a new ordeal of tortures when he arrived.
    CHAPTER XVI
    THE FIRST RESULTS
    As was only natural, the capital accumulated from the investment at Pitesti could not remain unutilized. The
    first Securitate that directly used the “rehabilitated” students in order to squeeze from the arrestees more than
    could be gotten by the bludgeon, was that of Pitesti. A wing of the prison containing a number of cells was
    placed at the Securitate’s disposal for use with detainees yet untried, usually members of a group that escaped
    arrest on the first raid; or those whose cases were complicated and would require more time; or those few who
    still, despite all conventional tortures, had not talked enough and were sent “into storage. ” The “re-educated”
    students recommended by Turcanu were put in the cells with these men in the hope that where the Securitate
    failed they would succeed.
    The method usually followed was very simple. The “re-educated” individual introduced into the cell had to
    show several scars from maltreatment, but was to maintain a prescribed attitude of complete silence, of
    suspicion toward all the newcomers, and of refusal to discuss anything with them for fear of “being denounced
    to the Securitate. ” After a while, when he felt he had by such bearing gained their confidence, he would
    approach the person he had been ordered to cultivate, carefully advising him as a younger neophyte to stay
    away from everyone, for “you can’t tell whether the one you talk to might not be a secret agent of the Securitate.
    ” This warning won him the confidence of his prey when later he gradually inquired into details of the man’s
    case, constantly offering helpful advice as to how he should behave when interrogated. Usually success with the
    newcomer was certain, especially if he was not a student. Romanians who had not attended a university had
    traditionally felt great respect for and trust in students over the years, and now, when such a man most needed a
    confidant, a moral support to help him bear the brutality of his captors more easily, it was the natural thing to
    lean on this helpful, respected, and better educated student, giving him full confidence. Later, during
    interrogation, he discovered his error, for the interrogator repeated everything he had told his “adviser” in
    confidence, but when he was returned to the cell, his confidant was no longer there.
    This method of eliciting secrets from newcomers was used extensively at the Ministry of the Interior, where
    several re-educated students were shifted from cell to cell for a year to act as “advisers” to persons recently
    arrested. Here are some examples:
    The student Caravia was used at the Ministry of the Interior to spy on the group of parachutists led by
    Alexandru Tanase in 1953. Freed in 1956 for a brief period, he was then re-arrested.
    At Iasi, then Barlad, then Hunedoara prisons, a former industrial student named Tudose was evidently a man
    who got results, for in 1956-57 he was still performing this dirty work for the Communist regime.
    At the Brasov-Codlea Securitate, the student Craciunescu from the Faculty of Agronomy was used in 1954. He
    was in charge of stalking the Legionary group that formed a resistance skeleton in the Fagaras Mountains.
    At the Securitate of Constanta, the student Iuliu Anagnostu from the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest was used
    for over two years, especially with Macedonian students arrested throughout villages in Dobrogea. He was
    responsible for the arrest of a group of over 25 Macedonians in the Mihai-Viteazul village and in Baschioi, as
    well as for the arrest of several Turks from around Constanta. He would introduce himself as a Legionary and a
    doctor, being neither one nor the other. For services rendered, he was allowed to “escape” around 1954, then
    was sent through villages in northern Dobrogea to perform more services for his masters by posing as a fugitive.
    Even though he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison, he was permanently liberated in 1956 when his case
    was reheard, while he was “escaped. ”
    The great plague of denunciations by the re-educated was to cause havoc in the large so-called “penitentiaries of
    execution” to which were sent condemned political prisoners to serve out the sentences handed down by the
    Securitate after the flagrantly staged shows called “trials. ”
    CHAPTER XVII
    PAUSE FOR ESCALATION?
    One day in April 1951, after almost everyone in Pitesti prison had undergone unmaskings, the procedure was
    abruptly terminated by order. The prison thus assumed the aspect of any of the ten penitentiaries existing in the
    “Romanian People’s Republic” at the time. A new period had begun. Already massive shipments of prisoners
    were leaving regional penitentiaries, and the large prisons, bound for the slave-labor camp at the canal
    mentioned above — veritable human herds driven toward a great slaughterhouse.
    From among the students, with the exception of the inept and those who were needed for further educational
    labors, those who were under a sentence of 10 years or less were sent to the canal, where they were promised
    much. At the same time, new transports of condemned students continued to arrive at Pitesti, among whom
    were many high school students.
    Up to this time, the 15 and 16-year-olds had been isolated at Gherla; now the natural patriotic inclination of the
    high-schoolers was to be exploited in the foulest possible manner. Some means had to be found, evidently, to
    destroy their native patriotism with a spectacular and definitive breakdown. Since Communist justice does not
    condemn on the basis of the infraction committed but according to the presumed potential of the victim in hand,
    the sentences pronounced against these children, in the majority of cases, would have dishonored the most inept
    or corrupt magistrate in a civilized land.
    The approach used in this campaign against patriotic adolescent students was serpentine: they were induced to
    “join” the “Legion of Michael the Archangel. ” The poor students did this in good faith, thinking they were in
    fact becoming members of the organization through which Codreanu had educated the youth of Romania in
    Christian ideals and knightly manhood.
    From among the Legionary students who had formerly led the cadres of the F. d. C. (“Brotherhood of the
    Cross,” the Legionary Movement’s high-school group), the O. D. C. C. selected those considered completely
    “re-educated” and ordered them to begin organizing the youths into Legionary groups just as though they were
    outside prison. No detail of this deception was overlooked. Everything was based on the principles followed
    when Legionary groups operated underground, and meetings were held “in the strictest secrecy. ” The
    high-schoolers responded completely; their adherence and loyalty was warm, sincere, and total. The preparation
    lasted several months and by the summer of 1951 they were considered ready to be taken to swear allegiance to
    the Archangel.
    Among the first victims of this satanic game were high school students sent to Pitesti from the canal work force
    for disciplinary reasons. Here is how the student, O. C., forced to “prepare” the high school students, told the
    story long afterwards:
    “One day, into the cell in which we were locked following our unmasking, several young high-school students
    were introduced in order that we might prepare them according to the order received previously through
    Turcanu. This order was categorical: Establish their membership, at any cost, in the Iron Guard (synonymous
    with “Legionary Movement” and “Legion of Michael the Archangel”), so that ‘the greater the height, the deeper
    and more definitive the fall!’ The effect of the unmaskings to come was thus assured.
    “I took this assignment with pangs of remorse, even though the human being within us all had been killed. Who
    could refuse? From the moment the high school student came in, the cell took on the aspect it had before the
    unmaskings; we acted as though nothing had happened and continued to behave as we had outside the prison in
    underground activity. The education began according to the rules: take advantage of their inclination toward
    Christian faith. So we taught them psalms and prayers; we discussed theology, counseled them, taught them
    how to fast. What seemed more monstrous than the destruction of our own self-respect, was our being made to
    eat their food when they fasted! This, to demonstrate to the re-education committee that we were really cured of
    the Christian sickness for good. As for patriotism, we stimulated their natural inclination by teaching them
    patriotic and Legionary songs, and instructing them in the laws and conduct required of any youth wanting to
    join the movement.
    “When their preparation was considered adequate, they were moved to another cell, where they felt the first
    hailstorm of the ‘unmasking’ bludgeons.
    “The new victims were passed through unmaskings by others than we who had ‘educated’ them. The ‘educators’
    were kept in reserve for more difficult moments, should they arise. When, with all the tortures to which he was
    subjected, a high-school student refused to talk, the head of the committee, with a diabolical satisfaction, would
    bring in the one who had ‘prepared’ him, for a ‘confrontation. ‘ It is not hard to imagine the collapse produced in
    the soul of a boy less than twenty years old when his counselor, his model of honor, courage, and integrity but a
    few days earlier, turned out to be his betrayer. ”
    My second example is the story told by one who had been one of the young victims. “Even now,” he said to me,
    “after having passed through the unmaskings, and knowing the dirty motive behind this inhuman staging, I
    cannot yet believe that N., who ‘recruited’ me into the ‘Legionary Movement,’ did everything only because it
    was ordered by the re-education committee. There was something in his teaching other than simply the
    following of orders — an inner compulsion, perhaps subconscious, but sprung from the soul, that changed
    everything in moments of truly soulful exaltation. One day, alone in our cell at dusk, a heart-breaking sadness
    came over his face and he quit talking, his eyes turning away to look through the bars at the twilight hills out
    there. Many times I asked him to tell me the reason for his sadness but he never would say; when I insisted he
    would look at me for quite a while, painfully, imploringly, then would turn away and look in another direction.
    Nearly always, after I questioned him, he would start talking about the new man, the truly Christian man
    capable of healing wounds not only of the body but of the Romanian soul. There was so much warmth, even
    passion, and such sincerity in his words, that I am convinced that these moments constituted for him the only
    means of escape from the infernal cycle into which he had been pushed against his will. And who knows?
    Maybe he imagined himself really free and that what he said was not intended to destroy a soul but out of pure
    love to help it. In the toughest moments of the unmasking, even when he was face to face with me and behaved
    as ordered on that dirty mission, I could not hate him.
    “Later, after the unmaskings, when danger had passed and we could talk more freely, I was the first one to try
    approaching him and try to establish a friendship I fondly wanted. As he had lost much weight due to the lung
    trouble he contracted, I offered to share the little food I received, but he refused any help. He even refused to
    talk to me. I read in his eyes the same heart-breaking pain I saw in the cell at Pitesti whilst he was trying to
    prepare me to orient myself into a life that would follow the insane drama then unfolding. For two years
    following this silent encounter he avoided meeting me, although we worked in the same workshop, on the same
    shift. I believe his anguish was probably much greater than mine. After this, he was isolated, and I do not know
    if he lives or not or whether he was cured of his infirmity inflicted during the unmaskings. I would give a lot to
    be able to talk to him just one single time, if only to convince him that in my heart he remained forever as he
    was in those moments while we were together there in our cell. ”
    Similar accounts were given me by several individuals. Particularly significant, I think, is the fact that almost all
    high-school students who passed through this unique experience, when given the opportunity to turn around and
    objectively look at the past, clearly distinguished between the definitely demonic and the humane, Christian and
    Romanian aspects of that preparatory phase; between the crushed and terrified prisoners who, acting by reflex,
    cozened and betrayed them, and the profound truth of the lessons they had, for whatever motive, given the
    victims.
    From among the high-school students tortured at Pitesti or Gherla will emerge true personalities matured by
    suffering, capable of facing the long darkness to which the Romanian people are now subjected. They will be
    able to sustain, in the inhuman isolation of Communist slavery, the hope of a new generation.
    Thus was the cycle completed. The labor of re-education was bearing its fruit. What had happened to all those
    who, out of the hope of saving their country and perpetuating the concept of free men, had sacrificed everything
    – absolutely everything? They had been changed into a mass of imbeciles by the fear born out of torture and
    despair; by the uncontrollable conditioned reflexes that the bludgeon had implanted; by reciprocal hatred; by
    quivering dread lest at any time, for any reason or none, from any motive, plausible or otherwise, they might
    have to repeat the unmasking. The personality of each individual had been made to disappear, leaving room for
    the robot. To speak, to do, to react, to command — it all became simple. Conditioned reflexes appeared at the
    slightest excitation; external reality was obliterated, forgotten, on command. The only thing that remained and
    was painfully present in body and soul was the anguish. In order to avoid physical and moral pain, man changed
    himself feverishly into an animal. What had been moral certainties before the collapse, became odious dangers,
    an unbearable nightmare from which one must escape at all costs.
    That is why one confessed imaginary crimes, in order to spread the ash of forgetfulness over the past, over
    reality, to complete the dissolution of the self, that could be only the source of inner suffering, and to substitute
    for the forgotten past a fictitious one, untrue but pleasing to those who conducted the experiment of “human
    metamorphosis. ”
    The tendency to falsify, imposed at the beginning by the methods of re-education, becomes later on a kind of
    necessity in itself. Through a mixing of intelligence with animal reflexes, of the false with the real, of cynicism
    with obligatory fanaticism, a person finds that he can exist only in a fictitious world where everything has been
    inverted.
    Collective madness becomes reality. All commanded vileness and crime will be pursued in its name — willingly
    and eagerly pursued. This madness will be sustained, nourished persistently, not haphazardly, but
    systematically, by a certain logic — paradoxical, but calculated — so that it can be used any time, anywhere it
    may be found useful by its masters. That is the triumph of Communist science.
    CHAPTER XVIII
    THE ESCALATION
    Spring brought the escalation. The capital of this investment, accumulated with such perseverance over the
    months, could not be allowed to remain idle. Under the direct supervision of the Ministry of the Interior’s
    representatives, students were screened and graded like so many cattle. Those considered “re-educated” but not
    capable of carrying out specific missions, were sent to the “work colony” (actually an extermination camp)
    along the canal that has never been completed to this day. With them were sent students considered definitively
    “new men” and able to supervise not only the labor but also qualified to control the “output in the area of
    education. ” Those not sent to the canal were distributed as follows:
    a. The most reliably re-educated were sent to Gherla prison in the north of the country. Their selection reflected
    indirectly the basis on which they were first separated into categories on arrival at Pitesti and before
    re-education, according to their respective sentences. Those who had been given the longest sentences, having
    received the harshest treatment, furnished the largest contingent of the “trusted re-educated” going to Gherla.
    Others in the shipment were those sentenced to less than ten years. These were not considered sufficiently
    reliable in themselves but were included so as to be kept under surveillance and eventually put under
    unmaskings once more — as it turned out, soon after their arrival at Gherla.
    b. Students with diseases of the lung were sent to Targu-Ocna prison in the Bacau region, which was reserved
    for them. It was called a sanatorium but the difference between it and other prisons was in name only. All
    prisoners with infected or injured lungs were sent there from all the prisons in Romania, but the number sent
    was controlled, as the authorities’ objective was to exterminate, with as little commotion as possible, but
    completely, as many as they could. In 1951, sick inmates numbered only 1,000; the majority of inmates at this
    prison were brought there from the re-educated student group to carry out the unmaskings thoroughly and with
    dispatch, and actually outnumbered their sick victims.
    c. Students considered trustworthy but who had not received sentences from a court of law were sent to the
    Ocnele-Mari prison in northern Oltenia, where many Romanians, who had been arrested in 1948 but had never
    been tried or even accused, were confined just for having been guilty of holding positions in the so-called
    bourgeois governments prior to Communist occupation.
    The Aiud prison, notorious for its own extermination treatment, was the only one to which no re-educated
    students were sent, just why is not certain. One reason may have been because it had been, since 1947, the
    prison to which any condemned person who was at all prominent was sent, and consequently some attention of
    the West was already focused upon it; sending re-educators to it might have revealed to the West the
    Communists’ unique methods of “re-education. ” On the other hand, the reason may have been simply that there
    could not be spared enough re-educators to work over the 3,500 prisoners housed there — it would have taken
    almost the entire output of reliable and expert re-educated men to do it. But it was rumored among prisoners
    that Aiud was just being left to the last.
    There was, of course, some pretense that this distribution of the students was made on their own initiative and
    that the Communist Party had no voice in it at all.
    In the spring of 1951, long before the closing of Pitesti prison, a secret meeting was held in which only
    members of the O. D. C. C. participated. It was chaired by Turcanu; no official representatives of the Ministry
    of the Interior appeared. The “work” performed up to this moment was evaluated. It was established that the
    “re-education of the students was an accomplished fact and that the results were encouraging;” that through the
    unmaskings “a great service had been rendered the Party and the working class” because through them had been
    discovered all the “bandits who were not denounced in the previous investigations,” and that all resistance
    “within the Pitesti prison” was broken.
    These statements of Turcanu were followed by “propositions,” actually a memorandum drawn up in which the
    approval of the Ministry of the Interior was requested for expansion of the experiment to all the prisons in
    Romania, for the re-education of all prisoners!
    To what degree the “memorandum” came from the “initiative” of the students is plain, I believe, from this
    account of the affair by the student S. B. :
    “I had just been brought from the room in which I was undergoing the tortures of the outer unmasking, into the
    cell that served as the O. D. C. C. office. I was to complete and put down on paper some declarations I made the
    day before and inscribed on my soap plaque. Turcanu and three or four other men were in this room evaluating
    declarations made by those preceding me. I couldn’t make out what they were discussing as they were speaking
    in such low tones. But suddenly a misunderstanding seemed to develop, possibly over some statement in a
    declaration, and the discussion became louder and more heated. One of the men, quite tall, whom I did not
    know, opposed Turcanu openly, whereupon Turcanu jumped up as one possessed by a boundless fury and
    attacked him unmercifully with blow upon blow. Not only was this man subsequently removed from the
    unmasking committee, but he was downgraded to the “bandit” category and subjected again to unmasking. And
    the beating, the demotion, renewed torture — all this not because he had failed to declare something, but simply
    because he had contradicted Turcanu! But then, perhaps he was simply a scapegoat, as it would seem that every
    now and then a loose-tongued collaborator, however willing, has to be sacrificed to stimulate blind obedience. ”
    If a simple controversy like this, over a remark by a third party, could bring Turcanu to such drastic action, then
    who would have the temerity to refuse to sign and applaud a memorandum prepared by him? And one important
    enough that it was to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior!
    The contents of this memorandum compared to those of any resolution “adopted” in a “Communist confab”
    were as alike as two drops of water. First came eulogies of the Party, then a report of results, followed by the
    classic Communist “constructive propositions” and finally the “pledges” to carry out to a successful conclusion
    the various labors “for victory of the working class,” etc., etc. Rounding off the document like a seal of approval
    was the series of well-known epithets against imperialists, Fascists, wealthy landowners and all those who plot
    behind the scenes for the overthrow of the order established with the help of the Soviet Union, et cetera ad
    nauseam.
    After reading it aloud, Turcanu had the 40-odd O. D. C. C. members present sign it, then forwarded it,
    according to the participants, directly to the Ministry of the Interior via the prison’s political officer. This
    “initiative” was so much the more monstrous because the motto: “Their destruction through themselves” was so
    evident throughout. But since precautionary measures taken by the Communist Party had failed to cover up the
    phenomenon entirely, the open participation of political officers in producing such documents was necessary, to
    give the impression of normalcy and official sanction.
    Now appeared on the scene, for the first time officially, a superior officer sent direct to Pitesti by the Ministry of
    the Interior, one Zeller, a colonel from the General Directorate of Penitentiaries. Even though he visited prisons
    dressed in a military uniform, Zeller was actually only a colonel in the Securitate, and worked directly under the
    orders of another such, Colonel Dullberger (later Dulgheru) and also General Nicolski, the General Director of
    the Investigations Service in the Ministry.
    One of the many missions entrusted to Colonel Zeller was the supplying of labor hands (i. e. prisoners) to the
    canal camps. At this time he was empowered to select students “who were fit to leave. ” As a matter of fact, the
    majority of students were of the opinion that he should know because they were sure it was Zeller himself who
    directed the unmaskings, or at least was among those directly responsible for them. Here are some details to
    support this conviction:
    The qualification for being “fit” for canal work was to have undergone unmasking, though officially this was
    called being “physically fit. ” Preceding the medical examination — which, by the way, was perfectly inhuman,
    lacking the most elementary human decency — Zeller would turn to Turcanu who was seated next to him, and
    ask, “Does he deserve to go to work?” And on the answer given by Turcanu depended Zeller’s decision.
    The goings-on in the cells at Pitesti were reported directly to Zeller in a full unmasking session by bloodied
    students. Likewise, at Gherla, a desperate prisoner, perhaps imagining that a vestige of human feeling yet
    remained in the heart of a Communist officer, stepped out of line and bekan to relate with tears in his eyes what
    he and others in cell 99 on the fourth floor were suffering in the autumn of 1951. Zeller, though he feigned
    surprise, took no steps whatever.
    He personally saw to it that no student left for the canal before having “made his unmasking.” Ironically, in
    1952, when the Pauker-Tescovici faction was liquidated and the Experiment suspended for the time being,
    Zeller put a bullet through his own head — in an orthodox cemetery, at that! Sometimes destiny is just: Zeller
    committed suicide among the dead whose faith he had labored so hard to destroy.
    That the regional Securitate of Pitesti knew everything that happened in the prison, is pretty well proven by the
    testimony of O. C., a student from the Polytechnical School in Bucharest:
    “I was arrested in Bucharest several weeks after most of my colleagues had already passed through the Rahova
    Road [Bucharest's Securitate. Ed. ] and the Ministry of the Interior investigations. Because the dossiers for the
    whole group were almost completed, the interrogating officer did not insist too much on details from me. But
    after declarations were made by those who preceded me in unmaskings at Pitesti, the Ministry requested a
    Supplementary investigation of me. Since it was considered unnecessary to transport me to Bucharest for the
    investigation, an officer of the Pitesti Securitate was charged with completing it, and this took several days. It so
    happened that I had known this officer in my high school days and we were both naturally greatly surprised to
    confront each other in these circumstances, but since there was another officer with him, he pretended not to
    know me. But the next day, when the investigation became more or less routine, the officer was unaccompanied
    by the second one and, miraculously, his tongue loosened.
    “At one point, he changed the tenor of the discussion entirely, and asked me somewhat parenthetically about
    what was going on in the prison. I had not yet made my unmasking and had no suspicion of the horrifying
    reality of tragedy after tragedy being enacted there, possibly in the very cell next to my own. I had heard shouts
    and thuds that penetrated the walls somewhat, but did not realize what caused them. Without realizing it, I was
    being put through the ‘waiting period’ or psychological preparation of my nervous system — screams and thuds
    heard later would already have been registered in my nervous system as ordinary happenings. So I told the
    officer honestly all I knew about the prison up to that time. He stood a moment, thinking. Then he asked me:
    “‘What do you know about unmaskings?’
    “‘What are those?’ I asked in my turn, surprised.
    “‘Listen to me well,’ answered the lieutenant. ‘In your prison some unusual things that have not ever happened
    before are now taking place. I cannot give you details, but I can advise you as a friend not to resist anything
    demanded of you, for it is useless and very dangerous. Make your unmasking, in other words, relate everything
    you know which you may have neglected to declare in the Securitate’s investigation. But to make it still easier
    for you, I suggest you ask to report to the prison’s political officer — he is in a position to advise you better. Tell
    him you want to unmask yourself but that you do not know how to go about it, and he will help you.’
    “I wanted to get more information on this, and asked him to explain further, but it was no use … When I
    returned to the cell I requested the chief of my section to allow me to report to the political officer.
    “Now, although I am naturally timid and was still suspicious of the deceptions practiced by the Ministry of the
    Interior, particularly at the office of the Malmaison [Military Prison in Bucharest] secret police, I somehow
    never suspected my former schoolmate, the lieutenant, of possible duplicity, and in fact complied with the
    advice he gave me almost at once without a second thought. My hasty decision I now regret, frankly speaking,
    only to the extent to which the evil I did to those who came my way after my unmasking was not justified by
    my own suffering. But the example of those who suffered so much before I did what I had to do is quite
    eloquent: with or without suffering, I would have ended in the same place.
    “As I was saying, I asked to be taken out of my cell to the political officer in order to make my unmasking,
    though I had no idea what this meant. To my surprise, they came the very next day to take me — to Turcanu!!
    He was awaiting me in the shower room and expressed surprise at my request, for I was the only one, he said,
    who had asked permission to make his unmasking without being tortured, without even being asked to make it.
    He was surly in manner, but seemed to have some good will toward me, explaining in some detail what was
    expected of one in unmasking (we were speaking of the outer unmasking only) and especially insisting on my
    being absolutely sincere, pointing out the consequences of any attempt to deceive.
    “As during the Malmaison investigation, I was faced with making some declarations that broke my morale;
    what I added to them at Pitesti did not carry much weight. I thought that this interview was all there was to
    unmasking. But upon being taken to another cell and placed in the position of ‘assisting,’ I was terrified by what
    I there witnessed. But any resistance was impossible; even if possible it would have been worse than futile.
    Then followed the catastrophe, my inner unmasking and its consequences …”
    With the exception of those with tuberculosis, O. C. was the only student I knew who made his unmasking
    without first passing under the bludgeon. His was in fact a case entirely separate from all others, for much later
    at Gherla he was to play one of the dirtiest possible roles, long after other students had recovered from their
    “purification. ”
    CHAPTER XIX
    THE EXTENSION INTO OTHER PRISONS
    (THE FIRST PHASE)
    Under the direct supervision of Colonel Zeller, the students from Pitesti were divided into several categories on
    the basis of the severity of their sentences, their physical condition, and especially their relative trustworthiness.
    Those considered unfit for work, the irrecoverable tuberculosis cases, were sent by van to Targu-Ocna prison,
    ironically called a “sanatorium,” where, of course, there were invalids transferred from other prisons.
    Immediately on arrival all prisoners were subjected to unmaskings, under the direction of Nuti Patrascanu, a
    medical student from Bucharest. In this case the approach used was different from that of Pitesti. There were no
    beatings, except when other methods failed. But these methods were much harder on the sick and the infirm.
    Those chosen to undergo unmaskings were confronted with the following ultimatum: “If you want to get
    medicine, you have to undergo your unmasking, you bandit!” Anyone refusing to cooperate was faced with
    confinement in a dark cell, devoid of fresh air, or a reduction to half rations, or both.
    “Look, bandit, your health is imprisoned here. If you choose to undergo unmasking, you shall receive the
    medicine you need, get well, and go home before the end of your sentence. You could see your mother, family,
    live freely, and continue your education. You must choose between life and death. Only you can decide … ”
    Even though the value of the medicine was questionable, to the sick it held out a promise of miraculous powers
    exaggerated in their minds by the fact that they could not get it, and the knowledge later that such medicine was
    denied them accelerated the progress of their destruction.
    This state of affairs caused a dramatic reaction. Virgil Ionescu, a law student from Bucharest, who had partially
    undergone unmasking in Pitesti, tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor blade, in order to
    end his suffering. He was discovered and bandaged, but only after losing a large amount of blood. This case was
    reported to the administration, but unmaskings continued nevertheless. The other students went on a hunger
    strike and warned the director that they would not quit until the prosecutor was brought to the prison, told about
    what went on, and asked to put an end to the unmaskings; but they were ignored.
    One Sunday morning, a soccer game was being played on the sports field near the prison, with a goodly number
    of civilians watching, among whom were many Securitate officers — part of the force guarding the hydroelectric
    works being built at nearby Bicaz. Only a narrow strip of land, on which ran a railway line, separated the prison
    from the soccer field, and when the students noticed the gathering at the stadium, they assembled in the cells
    facing the game and from the windows began to shout, “We want the prosecutor! We want the prosecutor! They
    are killing us! Help!” The prison personnel were not able to shut them up right away and spectators at the game
    were intrigued by the shouts for help which they could clearly hear.
    This incident became the talk of the town for a while, and the Securitate officers, following several indiscretions
    of prison personnel, came in and questioned the director. Others, especially civilians, informed the prosecutor of
    the Bacau tribunal. And the commandant of the Securitate, probably on his own initiative without instructions
    from the Party, ordered an investigation into the matter. It turned out to be only a formal inquiry, and the
    prisoners were then promised that no one would touch them and the guilty parties would be appropriately dealt
    with. But though the beatings and the blackmail stopped, and unmaskings for all practical purposes terminated,
    those who had tortured the students went absolutely scatheless, continuing to make life miserable for the
    prisoners and at the same time to hold the best positions in the prison.
    In the Ocnele-Mari prison the unmaskings did not become any milder. In the large prison population there, in
    addition to the “political detainees,” there were a great many “criminals,” who were included with the political
    prisoners because their crimes, for the most part minor ones, were considered to have political overtones.
    (These crimes included possession of firearms, attempting to flee the country, cursing prominent Communist
    personalities, etc. ) The greatest proportion of them, though elderly, were able to hold tools in their hands, so the
    Directorate of Penitentiaries opened a large furniture workshop in which all those capable were obliged to work.
    This arrangement precluded the rigorous isolation possible at Pitesti and prisoners could meet more freely and
    exchange either information or rumors from the interior of the prison, particularly while in the workshop.
    The arrival of students changed all this. All the work in the corridors was taken care of by students; the kitchen,
    watchmen’s duty, distribution of meals, the shower room, laundry room, etc. became the responsibility of the
    students, a fact which created envy and later hatred on the part of the common criminal prisoners who up to that
    time had had the benefits of these jobs. Gradually the entire life of the prison’s interior fell under the control of
    the students. They circulated freely along the corridors, entered cells whenever they pleased, under pretext of
    house cleaning or any other excuse, eavesdropping by cell doors and recording anything discussed inside,
    especially if the cells were occupied by more important political personalities. They mixed unnoticed among
    groups in the courtyard when outings for fresh air were permitted; they were to be found everywhere, their ears
    peeled, gathering information for the “dossier” of those to be put through the unmaskings.
    The first victims were chosen and isolated in the small cells of the prison’s north wing. Among whom were:
    Atanase Papanace, a prisoner for three years but still not tried or sentenced; the lawyer Mateias from Fagaras;
    the worker Gheorghe Caranica, a prisoner since Antonescu’s time, held for over nine years and although he had
    served his time, the Communists would not free him; the lawyer Nicolae Matusu, former secretary of the
    Peasant Party in Greece and a refugee in Romania during the war, etc. There were about ten in this first group
    of victims.
    The re-educators, as they later admitted, did not expect resistance from these people, considering their age. But
    they were indeed surprised. Not only did those men resist, but the other inmates heard about the situation very
    quickly, and reacted. Prominent personalities, such as Professor Mihai Manoilescu, former cabinet minister;
    Solomon, Gheorghe Pop, Petre Tutea, Vojen, and others, immediately warned the prison’s administrator that if
    the tortures were not stopped, they would all declare a hunger strike resulting in mass suicide. Because there
    was contact with the outside world through visitors or through incoming common prisoners, the directorate of
    unmaskings was worried lest information about the atrocities get out. As a result, he ordered that re-education
    through violence cease.
    A somewhat unique case is that of the camps for extermination by slave labor, established at the Danube-Black
    Sea Canal. [1] Here, the principal means for extermination was the brutally hard work. In its name the greatest
    abuses were committed, as if for a mythical ruling deity, and the greatest crimes perpetrated. The behavior of
    the re-educated students sent here by Colonel Zeller for “verifying the sincerity of their conversion,” is here
    recorded.

  6. On December 16, 2010 at 9:54 am hoff2 said:

    A somewhat unique case is that of the camps for extermination by slave labor, established at the Danube-Black
    Sea Canal. [1] Here, the principal means for extermination was the brutally hard work. In its name the greatest
    abuses were committed, as if for a mythical ruling deity, and the greatest crimes perpetrated. The behavior of
    the re-educated students sent here by Colonel Zeller for “verifying the sincerity of their conversion,” is here
    recorded.
    The Peninsula Labor Colony was the pompous name for one of these camps which nurtured crimes against
    human beings, crimes committed by the use of methods as bestial as those in the extermination camps of
    Communist Russia. The Colony was opened in the fall of 1950. In an open field on which the thistles grew and
    where in the past grazed the sheep of the Valea-Neagra village, on the edge of the Siut-Ghiol lake, the first
    barracks were built by common criminals and “pioneers,” after first surrounding themselves with three rows of
    barbed wire.
    Under the supervision of armed-to-the-teeth troops, there arrived from various prisons throughout the country
    massive transports of those who, for the next three years, were to fight hunger, cold, wet ground, and especially
    the viciousness of the Communists who stood over them while they dug a simple hole in the ground several
    miles long, for no other purpose than that of burying in it several thousands of exhausted bodies …
    From Pitesti were sent about 300 students, all of whom had passed through re-education and were under
    sentence of less than ten years. When the first contingent of students arrived the colony numbered over 3,500
    political prisoners. The students were quartered in barracks No. 13 and No. 14, each barrack having a capacity
    of 150-170 prisoners. The students were put by themselves as a precaution, so they would not make contacts
    which could “deteriorate” their condition, especially in the evenings after work, because once inside the
    barracks, administrative control was next to impossible. A quartering of students in scattered groups throughout
    the various other barracks in the camp would have weakened not only the foundation of their new convictions
    but also their shock potential, on which the Communists were counting greatly at the beginning.
    The living conditions and routine at this canal camp were totally different from those at Pitesti prison. In place
    of the hermetically closed cell, supervised by the administration through a peephole in the door, here you had
    barracks simply partitioned into four sections, each holding forty beds each.
    Prisoners left in the morning from an open area outside called the “plateau. ” All work brigades assembled there
    and one could talk more or less freely with other inmates — quite a contrast to the strictness and permanent
    isolation maintained at the Pitesti prison. Although the administration’s orders forbade mixing of the brigades
    while preparing for roll call, in practice the measure remained ineffective, for several thousand prisoners
    stepping out of barracks in the half-dark of early morning could not be efficiently controlled. Also the spirit of
    solidarity, which prevailed at that time at the canal among the prisoners, demanded a measure of foresight in the
    administration to prevent an immediate contamination, an inverse shock, as the students knew nothing,
    absolutely nothing of what was going on in other prisons.
    In addition to the two special barracks reserved for students, there were three reserved for Legionaries who were
    considered dangerous to the colony’s discipline and who were subjected to a very rigorous control and
    surveillance. These barracks were designated as A, B, and C, and were closely watched because the solidarity of
    the Legionary group was only too well known. Another barrack, designated O, held all those prisoners who
    were being punished for acts inside the “camp. ” They were almost all headstrong, insubordinate, and were in
    permanent conflict with the officers there and the political officials sent by the Ministry of the Interior.
    In the two student barracks, a climate of terror like that at Pitesti was maintained to the greatest extent possible
    from the very first evening. Some time was allowed for observing the students’ first reactions. The shock was
    supported quite well, at least so the experimenters thought, as the students did not falter in their habit of blind
    obedience.
    The first mission entrusted to the students coming from Pitesti was that of overseeing work on the construction
    site. Students were named brigade leaders, in other words, made directly responsible for the output of those in
    their charge. They were ordered, first, to increase the amount of work to be accomplished, and second, to see to
    it that “bandits” were killed slowly by cumulative physical exhaustion without anyone’s being able directly to
    prove premeditated extermination.
    Many of the students fulfilled their “mission” with zeal. From among the names of those who will not be easily
    forgotten, I give here several that are representative: Bogdanescu, chief of all students at the canal and first
    brigadier; Laitin; the Grama brothers (one of whom later hanged himself); Enachescu; Cojocaru; Climescu;
    Stoicanescu; Lupascu; Morarescu; etc. In addition to their contribution to the construction of the canal, the
    students had to continue the work of unmasking other prisoners. For this they resorted to a new method which,
    besides producing the desired results, was supposed also to test the feasibility of applying the system under
    different conditions. This method, broadly, was as follows:
    After the evening roll call, when in the camp’s interior any kind of movement was strictly forbidden and the
    guards walked their beats armed, the individual in question was discreetly asked to step out of his barracks and
    invited to follow the person waiting for him, who was none other than a student from barrack No. 13. Usually
    the student covered him with a blanket so he could not see where he was being taken. All of this took place
    under the eye of the guards who pretended to see nothing. The only ones permitted to walk between barracks
    after lights-off were the students charged with bringing in victims.
    Once the prisoner arrived at the students’ barracks he was subjected to the known torture methods. But here in
    the camp one could not ignore the fact that the victims yelled. At Pitesti the prison’s isolation made it an ideal
    place, but at the canal camp the proximity of the other barracks created a great inconvenience. But this difficulty
    was resolved by the use of an old method quite dear to the first police of the Communist regime in Russia. To
    cover the shouts of the victims, a group of students was constantly engaged in — making noise! They would sing
    in loud voices (no large earth-moving machinery could be brought into the camp to provide a racket) not exactly
    songs but what amounted to frenetic shouts of joy, changing melodies, and explosive yells, in order to cover up
    the agonized yells of the tortured victims inside the barracks.
    Many were the victims of unmaskings at the Peninsula and some of them paid with their lives for the mistake of
    accepting a student’s invitation. One among the victims in particular, whose case shook the entire “colony,” was
    Dr. Simionescu.
    Dr. Simionescu was a distinguished figure both in the old Romanian political circles and in the medical
    societies. Professionally very well prepared, he was one of the best surgeons in Romania before the war. He was
    a man of deeds; he occupied no definite position in the hierarchy of officialdom.
    Arrested in 1949, he was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for having “plotted against the legal social
    order”!!! Although he had actually been in the past an active member of the Cuzist Party,[2] he was arrested for
    having kept in touch with a group of political personalities in the National Peasant Party. He was sent to Aiud to
    serve his sentence where, in the spring of 1951, I shared the same cell with him for a while. At the beginning of
    March he was with a large group of us prisoners brought by van to the canal, where he was to continue serving
    his sentence at labor, even though his age was too advanced for it.
    I, who am endowed with a quite robust physique, was astonished that the elderly doctor never complained, not
    even when we were obliged to unload wet dirt from freight cars in bitter cold or freezing rain. After a short stop
    at the Poarta Alba camp along the canal, we were sent on to the Peninsula camp on May 5, 1951. The presence
    of Dr. Simioneseu in the camp was immediately noticed, for he was the only “cabinet member” to have arrived
    up to then. (The Communist puppet directors of the Romanian prisons, in their simplemindedness, referred to
    all former high government officials as “cabinet members,” and they extended the designation to the doctor,
    even though he had been only a highly respected professional man. ) The re-educators turned him over
    immediately to Bogdanescu. They could not forget that the doctor was a member of the generation that had
    constituted a permanent stumbling block to Communism in Romania.
    One evening he was invited into the students’ barracks, and it was at this time that his Calvary began. I could
    not learn exactly which tortures were inflicted on him that night; the doctor himself related nothing. But the
    traces left could not be hidden, for the next morning, before the brigades went to work, the doctor went to the
    infirmary with three broken ribs, and his whole body was black and blue, with here and there globs of
    coagulated blood. At the infirmary, in addition to the regular personnel, the camp’s director, Lieutenant
    Georgescu, was present; for no medical diagnosis was accepted as correct unless it had been approved by one of
    the political officers.
    The physician asked Dr. Simionescu about the cause of the lesions only as a matter of form for he, as well as
    everybody else in the camp, knew very well by whom and how they were inflicted. Simionescu replied briefly,
    without much detail, that he had been taken to barrack No. 13, where he was tortured by the students for reasons
    unknown to him. Then Lieutenant Georgescu, who had thus far watched the examination in silence, intervened.
    He, whose duty it was to maintain “legality inside the camp”, shouted:
    “Bandit, you are the victim of your own convictions! Those whom you, as a cabinet minister, were charged to
    educate, have beaten you! It is a pity you escaped so lightly! Get to work now and don’t let me catch you here
    again, for if I do, I’ll break your legs as well!!” Naturally, the camp’s physician dared not recommend any kind
    of treatment.
    From that instant, Dr. Simionescu was practically condemned to death. He was tortured in the students’ barracks
    night after night; he was subjected day after day to toil beyond his strength in the special brigade supervised by
    students. His body was enfeebled by so many beatings at night; and when at work he could not perform the
    labors his tormentors demanded, the students beat him into unconsciousness right under the eyes of the
    Securitate’s guards. He was old enough to be the father of any of the students who tortured him.
    Another and more subtle form of torture was also applied to Dr. Simionescu. He was forced to deceive his own
    family. At the canal, unlike the other prisons, prisoners were allowed to communicate with their families under
    certain conditions. There was a permanent shortage of foodstuffs, and in keeping with the Communist principle
    that “the enemies of the people must not feed on the backs of the people,” the food distributed by the camp’s
    administration was so insufficient that the inmates were subjected to a slow, methodical starvation that could be
    relieved only by the packets of food that prisoners were allowed to receive from the families outside. This
    provided a simple and easy means of keeping the slave-laborers under perfect control, for, of course, the
    precious privilege of receiving such indispensable nourishment was granted only to prisoners who fulfilled their
    labor norms and obeyed every caprice of the administrators and guards. The arrangement had the further
    advantage that it placed a great burden on the impoverished families of the prisoners, who had to support their
    loved ones with goods taken from their own meager rations. The added hardships and sacrifices thus imposed
    on the families were, of course, not unpleasing to the Communists.
    Dr. Simionescu took advantage of this privilege or “benefit” as it was called. So his torturers forced him to write
    home the appeals they dictated. He was even visited by his wife after a time. Throughout this visit a
    representative of the political officer was present. The doctor had to lie, saying that everything was fine, that no
    one should worry about him — and he was doubtless glad to keep up the spirits of his wife, who did not even
    imagine that she was seeing him for the last time!
    From the parlor the doctor was taken directly to the students’ barracks. There he was forced to crawl under the
    “brigadier’s” table, while above him Bogdanescu, together with the re-education committee, feasted on what his
    wife, through hardship and privation, had managed to bring him from home.
    “You have sucked long enough the sweat of the working people, bandit! When you were banqueting, the
    workers were shot because they fought for a piece of bread. Is it not so, Mr. Minister? From now on it is your
    turn to suffer in order to pay for the sins of yesteryear. ” The derision was, as usual, followed by a beating,
    which was all the half-starved man received for the food brought him by his wife who had, by the way, been
    reduced to the utmost penury by the confiscation of all their property.
    His anguish lasted quite a long time, until in despair he decided to cut the thread of his life. In keeping with his
    principles, however, he wanted to die, not by his own hand, but at the hands of his torturers. So in broad
    daylight, at work, although exhausted by beatings and lack of sleep, and brokem by labor and unspeakable
    humiliations, he dared advance toward the line of uniformed guards and try to cross over to the other side. But
    where? In broad daylight and in the middle of a zone full of watchful eyes? Any of the Securitate soldiers could
    grab him by the sleeve and bring him back. He could hardly walk. Thus, he did not run. The gesture was
    premeditated and it was consummated as he had foreseen. For the mission of those guards was not to preserve
    lives, but to liquidate as many as possible, especially when they were given a “legal” opportunity. When Dr.
    Simionescu reached the danger zone, a short burst of shots was heard: a Securitate man had emptied his
    automatic pistol into the doctor, who had collapsed only a few yards from him. Several men went to pick up the
    victim and bring him to the working area. He was still alive, and could have been saved. But this was not to be.
    He was finished off before the watching students, who, in their turn, were astonished by what they were
    witnessing for the first time. The doctor’s body was carried into the center of the encampment so all the
    “bandits” could see and take notice. Then it was hauled to the Navodari cemetery for burial among his former
    companions-in-agony killed by bullets, hunger, or torture — without a service for the dead, without a cross,
    without a candle, just exactly in accordance with Communist custom.
    The soldier who shot Dr. Simionescu was rewarded with a bonus, a promotion, and a furlough!
    Dr. Simionescu’s death could not be kept secret, as was that of so many who were killed in prisons. Many
    outsiders knew what went on in the canal labor camps. Contacts between prisoners and persons from the
    “greater prison” (as the canal laborers called the Communist-occupied country outside) was inevitable, because
    quite frequently outside technicians and engineers either sought the technical assistance and advice of their
    confreres in the camp or used the brawn of inmates without “professional qualifications,” which included
    lawyers, priests, doctors, and other well-educated men. Many outside even had in the camp a brother, a father, a
    colleague or friend; or if they had none of these, they saw in the prisoners their own brothers, i. e., people like
    themselves. That is why the help of those who were still relatively free was unquestioningly given, materially
    and morally, with all the risks that this involved. And not a few men ended up behind barbed wire, side by side
    with those they had helped.
    One such person, either directly or by letter, informed the doctor’s family. Someone came and claimed the body.
    Someone else, it seems, requested an audience at the Ministry of the Interior to get an explanation of why he
    had been shot to death. The authorities could not pass this off with a casual explanation, and shortly thereafter, a
    colonel in the Securitate, Cosmici, accompanied by his colleague Colonel Craciunas, arrived at the canal to
    begin an investigation. Here, as is normal Communist practice, you have superiors investigating their own
    subalterns, who had faithfully carried out orders issued by the very Ministry of which the investigators were a
    part and which had ordered the whole experiment in the first place!
    Several persons were called into the office and interrogated quite summarily, more often than not on matters
    quite unrelated to the matter in hand. Then the colonels departed for Bucharest to report their findings.
    At the beginning of September, or perhaps the very end of August, a group of about ten students from the canal
    camp were selected to be sent somewhere. It was learned later that they went to the Ministry of the Interior for
    questioning in connection with Simionescu’s death, but the students, who had been told to bring all their
    baggage with them, jumped to the conclusion that they were to be freed before the end of their sentences for
    behavior conforming to Communist expectations, especially since they recalled the semi-official promise given
    them at Pitesti. At the gate they were put in chains! This was a special mark of attention enjoyed only by those
    sentenced to more than fifteen years, or prisoners who were apprehended after escape, but the students took the
    chains as being just another cover-up, concealing an intention to liberate them, and so left the camp somewhat
    joyfully.
    But the sight of chains on those departing students signaled a change which could have been foreseen by the
    prisoners better initiated into the mysteries of Communist logic. When a change is in the making, even one of
    minor importance, there are clear preliminary indications, the most obvious one being that the officials in
    charge are removed. In Communist theory it is axiomatic that as an ideology, Communism is infallible, and
    errors, when committed, are due to opportunism or the incompetence of the individuals called on to apply the
    “Party Line. ” Such being the case, the one who pays the piper is naturally not the one who issued the orders,
    but the one who carried them out and life-long dedication to the Party will avail him nothing. If Molotov could
    not master all the working rules of Marxism in fifty years,[3] what can one expect of less talented and less
    experienced individuals? Invariably, when any project or policy that is initially applauded as a triumph of
    Communist genius and planning, is changed, the blame for the change is laid on the shoulders of the individual
    who had the misfortune to carry out the orders. The scapegoat idea is so deeply embedded in Communist
    practice that it is considered a law. And this pattern was, of course, observed at the Peninsula.
    The first obvious indication of coming change was the removal of Georgescu, the administrative head though
    perhaps the man least responsible in reality, who was sent to a post of lesser importance, but not otherwise
    punished. He was replaced by another prison director, Captain Lazar, a militia officer notorious for the terror he
    imposed at the Fagaras prison, where former army officers accused of collaboration with Antoneseu or of
    having joined anti-Communist brigades were imprisoned, together with practically all of the old regime’s police
    force. Each of the prison directors had a favorite means of punishment and Lazar chose — the beating pole.
    Other changes followed at the Peninsula, as if by magic. Students were taken out of barracks No. 13 and No. 14
    and scattered throughout the other barracks. The special work brigades which had inaugurated a terror
    theretofore unknown were disbanded, and the re-educated students were removed from positions of trust which
    they had held. But the change was even more far-reaching than this. Lazar himself became a different man. In
    contrast to his brutality at Fagaras, he now appeared to be a civilized man with whom one could talk!
    He rejected carloads of carrots and pickles destined for the prisoners’ diet on the pretext that one cannot
    accomplish work with undernourished men. Sanitary conditions became tolerable; working hours were reduced;
    production quotas were reduced to more reasonable levels. Except for those who were always disposed to
    interpret the course of international politics by the degree of “the soup’s viscosity”, no one considered this
    change as indicating a permanent new era, for what Lazar did was on orders from Bucharest. But this change
    was truly amazing and unique, for no other director, either before or after him, ever showed a similar attitude.
    And as an irony of fate, his own daughter fell in love with a prisoner and did everything in her power to
    influence her father to behave humanely.
    The disbanding of the brigades headed by re-educated students and the replacement of director Georgeseu
    produced an evolution of the Pitesti experiment along novel lines. It is quite possible that the initiators of the
    experiment might have decided to test the “re-educated” under conditions different from those under which they
    had undergone their unmasking at Pitesti. The memory of those conditions was kept fresh in the minds of the
    re-educated students by a sub-group completely loyal to the political officers at the canal. Each group seemed to
    alternate in dominance, through conditioned reflexes established at Pitesti. But what happened among the
    students thereafter deserves particular attention because it discloses totally unforeseen aspects of the human soul
    – at least of the souls of those who for more than two years had been transformed into something other than
    human beings.
    Escaping from the terror of their former milieu, from that closed-in hell in which they reciprocally tormented
    each other; seeing that the administration no longer supported those in charge of maintaining the atmosphere
    created at Pitesti; and finding that on the contrary they were looked upon with a significant “lack of
    understanding,” — the students gradually began to change their own attitude toward both their colleagues and
    the other prisoners. Little by little, where before even the thought was impossible, some began a process of
    self-examination, of critical analysis, or, as it was said back home, a digging out of the problems covered by the
    ashes of terror. Timidly at first, then with greater daring and in increasingly greater numbers, the students
    gradually began to see things through their own eyes and to draw logical conclusions without quailing in fear of
    being suspected of thinking other than as ordered.
    This process was prolonged and quite painful. It seemed like a returning from Hell, on the way out of a hideous,
    deformed world — a return from other shores, or an awakening from a long nightmare that left visible marks on
    body and soul. They were like blind men beginning to see; they feared the light, were suspicious of it,
    considered it unreal, impossible. But as a dam is slowly eroded by the water escaping from a fissure, so their
    doubt was gradually worn away and slowly replaced by a love of life, of honesty, of dignity, the beast of
    yesterday reverting to manhood.
    The wide diversity of character among the victims accounted for the wide range of time taken by their recovery.
    Some who had suffered less and were naturally more pliant regained their old selves almost immediately. But
    for others the comeback was most difficult — much time had to pass, month upon month, their wounds being
    too deep to heal rapidly. The deeper contoured structures, which had yielded with great difficulty and shown the
    greatest resistance during the unmaskings, also retained the most stubbornly the alien shape that had been
    imposed on them. Moreover, the students suddenly expelled from barracks No. 13 and No. 14 and scattered
    among the other prisoners found themselves in radically changed circumstances. They also had to reckon with
    some of the political officers and the stool pigeons who served the Communists without being forced and even
    without being asked, all of whom saw in the students’ possible comeback a danger to their personal “careers,”
    (even though a decrease in the number of informers would normally have enhanced each one’s value). In any
    case, a whole host of different attitudes bristled and clashed under the horribly unnatural conditions of a slave
    labor camp.
    But in many of the students, little by little, the wounds of the past whose scars would perhaps remain forever,
    began to heal, bringing a certain self-control, but not forgetfulness — that would never come.
    But the Communists will not give up. They will only change the application of “re-education” and perhaps
    improve the methods. [4]
    1)A total of 11 camps, according to Ion Carja’s Intoarcerea din Infern … pp. 12-14. — Editor.
    2)
    See above, p. xxx. It is noteworthy that while the party to which the doctor belonged was emphatically
    patriotic and nationalistic, he was convicted of association with members of the most “democratic” of the
    political parties, one whose leaders had on several occasions sought “negotiations” with the Soviet. (Tr. )
    3)
    Scryabin, better known under his Russian alias of Molotov, was one of the leading agents of the Jewish
    revolution in Russia, having begun his criminal career as a Communist conspirator in 1906, and held positions
    near the top of the Soviet government ever since the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II. He was a member of the
    triumvirate that succeeded Djugashvili (alias Stalin), but was, with his confederates, replaced by Khruschev in
    1959 and exiled to Outer Mongolia. Thus at the time that he missed his footing, he had more than fifty years’
    experience in the Bolshevik terrorist organization, forty of them near the top of the managerial hierarchy. It is
    to this that the author here refers. (Tr. )
    4)
    It is not unlikely that the sudden change at the slave-labor camp was made to determine the degree of
    permanence of the re-education in individuals of different characters. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XX
    THE DEMON PERSISTS
    At the time the experiment at the canal came to an end, unmaskings at Gherla prison, on the banks of the Somes
    River in northern Romania, reached an intensity that perhaps surpassed even the most difficult moments at
    Pitesti.
    In contrast with what was tried in the prisons already mentioned, the system at Gherla was designed to push the
    technique to its utmost possibilities, extending it to categories of prisoners other than the students.
    For this purpose, a sizable group of re-educated students was sent by the Ministry to Gherla as a sort of
    avant-garde charged with laying the groundwork by gathering information about the atmosphere and outlook
    among the prisoners there. When others capable of work at Pitesti were sent to the canal, Turcanu was sent to
    Gherla, accompanied by his immediate entourage who were most devoted to him and also the most adept at use
    of the bludgeon. They prepared the way for the larger contingents that were sent later.
    Special measures were taken by the political administration of the prison in advance of Turcanu’s arrival. The
    entire fourth floor was evacuated for use in unmaskings, and placed at Turcanu’s disposal. All the students from
    Pitesti were to be incarcerated in the cells on this floor, the top one of the main prison building.
    Gherla prison was second in importance only to Aiud. Originally a reformatory for minor delinquents, it was
    adapted to other uses as the conflict between the Romanian populace and their Communist masters developed.
    It was then equipped with special workshops in which the condemned, without regard to length of sentence or
    state of health, were subjected to working conditions much worse than at the canal.
    The hundreds of students transferred to Gherla were all left on the fourth floor in their cells for quite some time,
    completely isolated from the rest of the inmates. Then their screening began anew, under the direct supervision
    of the Securitate Lieutenant Avadanei, the new political appointee in charge of re-education. The students were
    then re-grouped and sent into workshops, with specific missions to accomplish.
    Contact between the new prisoners and the old was established then without any difficulty. None of the older
    prisoners could even guess that those newly arrived were living in a different world and governed by laws other
    than human ones. Their reception was as natural as could be, with much warmth, even with joy and relief, for
    the placing of a student corps in their midst was a pleasant surprise and considered by the workers as probably a
    mistake on the part of the Communists![1]
    Soon, however, a very few of the new arrivals tried to warn their destined victims, for despite their inculcated
    terror, a small grain of humanity, encysted in their souls, could not continue dormant under the warmth of their
    reception by the older prisoners at Gherla. Among the hundreds of students there were several who mustered
    courage to caution one or more of the older men to beware of them. Great as was the risk they took, equally
    great was the inability of those being warned to comprehend what they were being told. It seemed to them
    incredible — surely these warnings must be prompted by the Communists, who for a long time had been
    conducting a campaign of defamation against the students as a class. If a student spoke evil of his colleagues,
    how could the individual being warned verify the statements except by asking another student, whom he had
    known on the outside as a dedicated anti-Communist? And the contingents of students sent to Gherla pretended
    to be still staunchly anti-Communist in order to gain the confidence of the older prisoners and learn from them
    everything that might be useful to the administration.
    The mad attempt by a few of the students to warn of what was to come was made in vain. None of the workers
    would believe the monstrosities with which the students were charged. For one thing, there was not much real
    opportunity for extended conversation to elucidate the warnings, and there was always the risk of being
    overheard and reported — a danger that maintained the conditioned reflex of fear in the students. Although a few
    had the courage to talk to workers in the prison shops, it did not enter their minds to discuss among themselves
    the possibility of a general change of the state of mind induced by their re-education at Pitesti. They dared not
    trust one another! So there was no concerted effort made to warn the workers — only a few scattered gestures by
    isolated individuals here and there. But this did not prevent Turcanu from learning about what was going on.
    Among the students who arrived in the first lot was one named Rodas, originally from Ploesti. When he first
    went to work, he met former friends in the underground, men in whom he had complete faith. Taking advantage
    of a moment of freedom from surveillance, he related to one of them the entire drama of Pitesti in simple words,
    trying to make it clear to him as quickly as possible, as he knew he did not have much time. His friend listened
    attentively, but could hardly believe what he heard. So he tried to verify the story by asking another student
    whom he trusted. Actually, he hoped to get a repudiation of a story that seemed perfectly incredible. And, as he
    had expected, the student put his mind at ease, saying, “Rodas is an informer for the Securitate, and what he
    said is part of an infamous plan set up by the Communists to compromise the students!” The worker went to bed
    reassured; a heavy burden was lifted from his heart; and the next day he told his friends to beware of Rodas.
    The informer immediately reported to Turcanu, for so far as he was concerned, from his heart, too, was lifted a
    burden, for he, as it turned out, was Rodas’s surveillant — a pure coincidence!
    The next day, Turcanu entered a cell on the fourth floor and ordered all the students to face the wall. Then he
    called out, ordering somebody in the corridor to come in. When the students were ordered to turn around, they
    saw standing beside Turcanu a person with a sack over his head so they could not recognize him. And when in
    the silent cell Turcanu jerked the sack off, they still could not recognize the man, for before them stood a figure
    with a grotesquely disfigured head, his entire face one swollen bluish wound. Large globs of blood covered his
    features, stringing downward over his clothes. The man was visibly shaking on his feet, hardly able to stand
    upright. His whole body trembled as though siezed with chills. A corpselike pallor spread over the faces of all
    the students as they fearfully gazed, trying in vain to identify the victim and imagine a reason for such
    disfiguration.
    “Rodas squealed,” said Turcanu, and then everyone understood. “I have ears everywhere,” continued the
    monster. “A word to the wise … to all who eventually may be tempted to talk. This is the first case; the next one
    will not be brought before you to see, for he will not live … Just so you all may know.” This scene was repeated
    in almost all the cells on the floor. After such a spectacle, could anyone contemplate warning the workers
    again?
    I observed several times during my years in prison that witnessing the suffering and torture of another often has
    a stronger psychological effect than one’s own suffering. Prolonged physical torture eventually produces a sort
    of analgesia, which if it does not deaden the pain of blows, at least diminishes its intensity. But invariably, when
    you see someone else being tortured, the image produced in your mind becomes fantastically exaggerated and
    has a truly polarizing effect on the consciousness. This phenomenon was so useful to the Communists that they
    gave it a name, “witnessing-the-spectacle,” and used it systematically in investigations in general, and
    particularly in unmaskings at Pitesti. The individual who “witnessed the spectacle” was seized by such fear that
    his very intestines froze within him.
    The effect, then, that Rodas’s appearance had on the students at Gherla can be guessed. Thereafter all the
    students were ostentatious in manifesting a provocative anti-Communist attitude in order to obtain information
    for dossiers on their future victims. In the evening they would dutifully prepare their reports for the committee,
    where cross-checks were made.
    The appearance of the students who were taken to the workshops was most deplorable. The terror, hunger, and
    the regimen of isolation to which they had been subjected for months on the fourth floor had turned them into
    living phantoms. Many workers, out of love or charity, shared their own poor rations with them hoping to help.
    The student accepted food, for hunger is invincible; but once his hunger was appeased, terror took its place.
    And he would report in the evening that he had accepted Legionary help from the so-and-so bandit!!
    Little by little, day after day, the dossiers were being built up, with emphasis on information leading to
    identifying workers who had the most influence in the prison. Unmaskings were resumed, Room 99 on the
    fourth floor being retained for this purpose. It faced northeast, away from the town, its windows looking down
    on the inner courtyard of the prison, and was considered most suitable as no one from outside could hear the
    screams and blows. It had two doors but was not contiguous to any other cell. Not far away, however, still in the
    inner wing and on the same floor, were three smaller cells, 96, 97 and 98, which were kept for use in case of
    unusual resistance, as was another small cell, 101, in the front wing. In these small cells veritable orgies of
    torture took place.
    The activities on the fourth floor at Gherla could not be completely concealed from the other inmates of the
    prison, especially those whose cells were on the floors immediately below. They noticed first of all that while
    on the other floors members of the staff and prisoners passed frequently along the railed balconies outside the
    cells looking on the inner court, there was no movement on the balcony of the fourth floor. Some of the
    prisoners wondered about this and guessed that something unusual must be happening up there. Then one day
    they witnessed a remarkable scene. Suddenly, at one end of the fourth-floor balcony, the door of a corner cell
    (Room 99) was flung open and out darted a figure, his face covered with blood, who dashed along the balcony
    and down the stairway pell-mell, yelling at the top of his voice that he was being murdered by his cellmates. In
    hot pursuit came the O. D. C. C. boys out of Room 99, who caught him as he headed for the administration
    office, and dragged him, screaming and struggling, back up the stairs. Then all disappeared into Room 99.
    The bleeding victim was a young student, Bubi Roman from Timisoara Polytechnical School, who had been one
    of the most dedicated of anti-Communists. To quiet the talk among the workers in the shops, the O. D. C. C. put
    into circulation the story that Roman suffered from paranoia, and that his mental condition had deteriorated
    until his delusions of persecution had become violent insanity. To make this fiction more plausible, for several
    days thereafter they ostentatiously conducted Roman daily to the infirmary, where Dr. Barbosu gave him
    hypodermic injections that were falsely described as powerful sedatives.
    After this incident, the surveillance over the fourth floor was intensified. The door of Room 99 was never under
    any circumstances left unlocked; no one being subjected to unmaskings was left unguarded for even a moment;
    and supplemental beatings were administered for even the slightest gesture that could be interpreted as an
    attempt “to sabotage the unmaskings.”
    The director of Gherla prison at this time was a Securitate captain named Gheorghiu, whose unique
    characteristic was cynicism. And he had a temper that would flare up, for instance, if a newly arrived prisoner
    admitted he was condemned for only five or ten years; but he was very happy when a prisoner admitted a
    25-year sentence! “This,” he used to say, “is Gherla University. When you graduate (but I do not believe you
    ever will) you will be true men. Until then, I am your master.”
    The political officer was Lieutenant Avadanei, a Moldavian from the Botosani region, and, some say, a former
    elementary school teacher. Extremely evil, he felt some kind of fiendish satisfaction in trampling upon the
    bodies of prisoners until they fainted. At Gherla there was plenty of proof that bestiality, when unleashed, and
    nurtured by fear, becomes a sort of necessity, an insatiable appetite that can never be satisfied, and grows in
    direct proportion to its exercise.
    At Gherla, one beat another only for the pleasure of it, no longer to destroy a belief or supplant it with another,
    or extort secrets, or disfigure the soul. One beat senselessly. Workers and students, young and old, educated and
    the illiterate, were all tortured the same, even when they had nothing more to say, could not confess any more
    than they already had, could not be any further degraded.
    During the war, Captain Magirescu was sent to the Russian front whence he returned without one of his legs.
    Arrested and condemned in 1948 at Iasi for anti-Communist activity, he was sent to Gherla, where he worked in
    the workshop. Then he was put in room 99 for unmasking. In the end, they beat him over the scar of his half-leg
    with broomsticks until his mouth opened — as did his wound.
    Others at Gherla in room 99 while undergoing unmasking were forced to move their bowels into the mess-pans
    in which they normally received their soup. They were then forced, during continued beating, to eat their own
    feces from the dish.
    The peasant Ball from the Hunedoara region was kept for several nights hanging by his armpits, having a
    stone-loaded knapsack on his back, his feet hanging two inches above the floor so he could not rest his weight.
    And because it seemed to his tormentors that his burden was too light, they also would climb on his back. And
    his was not the only case!
    Prisoners were forced to “polish” the “samot” (a kind of rubbery material covering the floors) even though this
    was an impossibility; they scrubbed at this ridiculous task hours on end with a dry cloth, while at the same time
    carrying piggyback two, three or more committee members. When exhausted, their throats choked with the dry
    dust, they collapsed, they were not allowed to lie there and rest, but were given more beatings.
    Another interesting custom was that of requiring inmates to crawl under a wooden bed from one end to the
    other, using only their elbows to propel them through, the body held perfectly straight, without any help from
    the knees. As they came to each end they were met by committee members with clubs to indicate when to turn
    around. For hours, morning or afternoon, this sport was enjoyed by the re-educators whenever they felt the urge.
    Only prisoners lucky enough to faint in the process were left in peace.
    At other times, they were ordered to crawl part way under the bed, then suddenly stand up straight through the
    bed-boards, throwing everything into disarray, messing up the handful of clothing remaining to them after years
    of detention, and then ordered by the use of clubs, to remake the beds in half a minute with the headrest just as
    high as before.
    It was at Gherla also that prisoners were forced to “run the gauntlet” between two rows of re-educators armed
    with broomsticks — not just once, but back and forth again and again, slowly. At this prison the use of lavatories
    was at times absolutely forbidden, with consequences that can be imagined.
    But sadistic torture was not the only kind indulged in at Gherla: there was also humorous torture, accompanied
    by jokes! One victim, considered the greater bandit, was obliged to stand on the shoulders of a lesser bandit, and
    from there launch himself into the air, simulating an airplane at landing. This was repeated until he landed
    perfectly flat, or broke his ribs.
    1)
    The reader must remember the peculiar situation in Romania where university students, being a select and
    intellectually superior group with a reputation for integrity, patriotism and love of God, were highly
    respected. See pages xxiv ff. above. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XXI
    DESPERATE ENDEAVORS
    At Gherla, as at Pitesti, there were prisoners who watched for any opportunity, the slightest relaxation of
    surveillance, to commit suicide. Others tried to tell the director of the prison what was being done on the fourth
    floor, even though they could not really expect anything in the way of corrective measures from those who had
    ordered the whole experiment, or from those who conducted it and reaped the harvest from it. These desperate
    endeavors bordered on insanity. But then, everything that happened at Gherla was a sort of madness, a
    collective insanity seizing administrators and prisoners alike, who competed to destroy everything that could be
    called human in a world where, long ago, man had been reduced to a hated animal to be exterminated by hunger
    and terror.
    The first prisoner who tried to approach the administration was a Macedonian worker named E. O., from Banat,
    who had been condemned to ten years at hard labor. One day, while full unmaskings were in progress, his cell
    was visited by an inspector from the Ministry of the Interior, General Nicolschi himself, who was in charge of
    the General Office of Investigations for the whole country. The routine followed during his visit was like that at
    Pitesti: the prisoners stood at attention, having been warned by the re-educators not to speak, but only listen to
    the General. Suddenly, when nobody expected it, E. O. broke ranks and requested permission to speak. The
    inspector was so surprised, he let him talk.
    As rapidly as he could, for he knew the opportunity would not last long, he related to the inspector all that he
    and his cellmates were suffering; asked that measures be taken to stop the torturings and to punish those
    responsible for them. Director Gheorghiu, who witnessed this scene, feigned so perfectly to be impressed and
    visibly surprised that the victims themselves could have believed that he knew nothing about such things
    happening. He told General Nicolschi that he knew nothing of torturings, that no one had ever reported anything
    of the sort to him, that he would investigate personally to learn how much of what E. O. said was true, and that
    he would take the necessary steps to correct the situation, if it actually existed. The Inspector General was
    prompt to promise that he would look into the matter himself, and that he would personally see to it that the
    guilty parties were punished. Both Nicolschi and Gheorghiu ignored the obvious evidence before their very
    eyes, the condition of the prisoners at that very moment — their battered faces and the black and blue contusions
    on their emaciated bodies, visible, of course, on E. O. as he made his report.
    Of course no investigation was ever made, nor any remedial steps taken. Instead, Turcanu instituted reprisals,
    consisting this time of pulling off toenails with pliers, necessarily supplied by the administration for that
    purpose. This happened in the tiny cell in which E. O. was isolated after making his report. When I met him in
    1954, he could eat only bread and potatoes, for by the time he left that cell, his liver had been destroyed.
    Despite later denials, the entire experiment was supervised and coordinated by the Communist Ministry of the
    Interior — by General Nicolschi or his superiors. Two students, Popescu and Andreescu, who had undergone
    unmasking while at Pitesti, were summoned to a supplementary inquisition in Bucharest. They spent several
    months there in special cells the Ministry of the Interior maintained on Victoriei Street; then, perhaps because of
    an oversight on the part of some officer in charge of transportation, they were taken to Jilava, where they
    remained for some time and were thrown in with the other prisoners. There the warm, friendly atmosphere
    among the prisoners and their trust of one another helped allay the fear in their hearts. Eventually Popeseu and
    Andreescu told some of them of earlier events at Pitesti, naturally without too much detail. Strangely enough,
    however, the moment thev arrived at Gherla, the O. D. C. C. committee already knew everything they had told
    the inmates at Jilava. Through its informers the prison administration at Jilava had learned of it, transmitted the
    report to the Ministry, which in turn warned Turcanu. The suspicion of their being “opportunists” — a term used
    at Pitesti for those who appeared to have been won over but remained “bandits” at heart — was sufficient
    grounds for their being forced to submit again to the entire gamut of torture, in the company of others who were
    passing through unmasking for the first time.
    Some prisoners tried to escape from the unmaskings by choosing the supreme solution, suicide. The peasant P.,
    from the Constanta region, who had been arrested and condemned to 15 years imprisonment, was brought to
    Gherla in the summer of 1951, and shortly thereafter taken to room 99. Because he offered resistance, he was
    isolated in one of the smaller cells and subjected to an individual unmasking under constant surveillance. But
    one day, left alone for a few minutes, he was able to get a piece of glass from a window pane and awkwardly
    cut the veins of his neck. He was soon found flat on the floor in a pool of blood; the re-educators in a panic sent
    to the administration for help. Director Gheorghiu and the political ofricer came running, with the prison
    physician in tow, who stopped the bleeding. When he could be questioned, P. told them that he tried to commit
    suicide because he could no longer endure the tortures inflicted on him by fellow prisoners for no reason. The
    director assured him that thenceforth nothing would happen to him, and that those who tortured him would be
    severely punished, but that he would havp, to promise never to attempt suicide again. P. promised; the director
    left the cell. Then immediately entered Turcanu and others, who never left him alone until he capitulated,
    completely cowed and broken.
    Another peasant, this one from Moldavia’s Campu-Lung, sought to end his life differently. For writing the
    declarations during his unmasking, he was given the usual soap tablet and a needle. He broke the needle and
    swallowed the pieces, thinking to end his agonies; but the needle must have lodged in some marginal tissue, as
    he suffered not a single ill effect. When the written declaration was required of him, and of course the needle as
    well, he had only the soap tablet to turn in! He said he had lost the needle. He was then tortured and forced to
    search for it. In the end he had to confess that he had swallowed it. Now, in addition to ordinary tortures, he was
    obliged to move his bowels into the mess-pan for three or four days and check to see whether or not the pieces
    of the needle had been eliminated. Of course he did not find them. The immediate consequence of this was the
    destruction of his liver by severe beatings, necessitating in time complicated surgery which left him, for the
    remainder of his life, able to eat only toasted bread and baked potatoes. When I met him in 1953, still in the
    workshop, he was distributing the bread out in the hall as part of his job; the administration, as a great favor,
    granted him the privilege of baking for himself a handful of potato in the prison kitchen. It would be a miracle if
    he is still alive.
    At Gherla the technique of surprise by sudden betrayal was modified, doubtless in the light of experience
    acquired at Pitesti. Here, for example, is a scene described by a high-school student who was among the last to
    pass through room 99. He was one of a group of youths arrested and sentenced just before the closing of the
    “Center for Re-education at Pitesti,” and one of the few who, though serving time at Pitesti, miraculously were
    not subjected to re-education there; as a matter of fact, that was the reason why he was not shipped to the labor
    camp at the canal. I quote him:
    “Having arrived at Gherla, we were quartered in a large cell on the fourth floor, where there were several older
    students who circulated among us and soon succeeded in gaining our confidence, even coming to know us
    intimately. Under the circumstances, we felt we could ask their help on various personal problems which we
    could not solve by ourselves. Thus each of us found himself a confidant, an advisor, a friend. None of us
    noticed that their principal concern was focused on just two points: our anti-Communist activity, and our
    attitude toward the prison administration, especially its political officers.
    “Around the beginning of September, we were moved into room 99. Here we met other students who received
    us with the same warmth as those in the first cell.
    “Our days were organized according to a schedule which, within the limits of the prison’s regulations, was
    rigorously respected. The day began with prayer said on our knees. Then followed the National-Christian[1]
    education period, which lasted quite a while. The afternoon was reserved for more informal occupations. There
    were several groups studying different foreign languages, and you joined the one you wished; lectures were
    given on various subjects by those who had studied them, to enlarge our general knowledge. The evenings
    offered the most pleasant moments. Usually someone with literary talent would give us a talk on the work of a
    Romanian or foreign writer. We would all be seated around him and a warm family atmosphere made us forget
    the inferno that surrounded us. Patriotic poetry was not neglected, nor even the songs, although the prison rules
    strictly forbade singing, especially patriotic singing. The day ended with prayer again said on our knees.
    “Who could believe that those who led the prayers, appearing almost transfigured with religious fervor, could
    be perjurers? Could it be that in those moments, taking advantage of the opportunity, they too were truly
    praying? More than two weeks passed in this manner. Such an atmosphere of perfect harmony prevailed that not
    a few times I felt a satisfaction in having been arrested, for through my arrest I was privileged to know such
    men and enjoy such moments! Friendships flowered like buds in the spring! No one could ever suspect how
    near were the blizzards.
    “The room chief was a student from Iasi, Alexandru Popa, not too bright compared with some others, but very
    active. Turcanu too was in the room. But he was very reserved and went around almost unnoticed. Now and
    then he, Popa and two or three others would go into a corner and talk in subdued voices. Because they were all
    from Iasi, and friends besides, no one suspected anything amiss in these private confabs.
    “And then all of a sudden, the sky fell in. One evening, at the end of the work day and after the latch was closed
    on the outside of the cell, we were getting ready for the usual program when Turcanu gave the order that
    everyone except us (the late arrivals) should form into two rows, leaving a narrow corridor between. Each one
    had in his hands either a bludgeon, a broomstick, or a belt. Turning to us he ordered us to run the gauntlet
    between the two rows. We thought this was a game intended to give us all a little fun. But in a few seconds the
    room reverberated with our shrieks and with the oaths of those beating us. I was by chance at the end of the line.
    I stopped bewildered, and forgetting that I also must follow where my friends had passed, I got over to the end
    of one of the beaters’ rows beside one of the older ones, and began a frightful yelling, not realizing what I was
    doing, literally crazed by the spectacle unfolding before my very eyes. I was gesticulating, hands up in the air,
    like an insane person caught in a crisis. The individual standing by me suddenly recognized me as being one of
    those supposed to pass under the bludgeons and, grabbing me by the neck, shoved me into the gauntlet. This is
    how I entered the unmasking. How I came out of it, you had the opportunity of seeing for yourself when you
    met me. Much time has passed since then and somehow I have succeeded in seeing things more lucidly. ”
    I asked the boy, “How did the beaten group react as a whole, for they must have reacted somehow?”
    “I could not say that anybody tried to defend himself,” he replied, “for everything happened so fast. Anyway,
    resistance was useless. If there was any spontaneous reaction, it did not last long. It is true that several of those
    who were beating us ended up with cracked skulls, but this was probably accidental in the confused melee; but
    perhaps it happened intentionally, for among the wielders of weapons there may have been some who struck a
    “colleague” to revenge some beating received during his own unmasking. Anyhow, when it was all finished,
    there we were, the wheat with the tares, in a pile of broken and bloody bodies, heaped on the floor. Among
    these was my body. My soul left me that evening, and it has not yet returned into me entirely, not even now. As
    at Pitesti, maybe even worse than there, the inner collapse preceded the physical one. For in contrast to Pitesti,
    this time the students who had taught us and prayed with us took part in the proceedings from the first session.
    Their presence among the beaters contributed, I believe, to the paralyzing of any possible spirit of resistance.
    “Following this, we passed into the usual phase of unmasking, which lasted more than a month and was not
    much different from the procedure used at Pitesti. Then, there followed a series of two more. I was an ‘in
    position’ witness to the first series because I was still considered not fully re-educated. During the second series,
    some of my colleagues were promoted to the ranks of the re-educated. By now I was witnessing impassively
    their disintegration, trying only to see in them that which I could not see in me — how a soul is shredded.
    “From time to time one of our group would disappear for several days. I had no idea where he was taken. When
    he returned, he was completely broken. It was only later that I found out that the ones so chosen were put into
    the small cells down the hall and were there subjected to a continuous individual unmasking. ”
    The “witnessing-of-the-spectacle” was used as at Pitesti, except on a larger scale. The slightest sign of doubt or
    of disobedience was immediately punished by bringing the culprit into room 99 to watch an unmasking. The
    feelings experienced by such witnesses were described to me vividly by one of the scores of students with
    whom I spoke:
    “Watching others being tortured,” he said, “I had the impression that I had been bound and placed on a powder
    keg, and that a madman constantly circled around the keg with a lighted candle. I expected the flame to touch
    the powder at any moment, and that the keg with me on it would be blown up. That could have happened at any
    time; in other words, if a re-educator suddenly took the notion that I had been given too light a punishment for
    my suspected guilt, he could have transferred me from ‘spectator’ to ‘sufferer’ on the spot — the equivalent of
    setting off the powder with the candle flame.”
    In just a few months, more than 200 prisoners passed through unmaskings at Gherla and the Communists thus
    increased the ranks of their faithful by 200. This is why the “progressive” education introduced by the
    Communists used the bludgeon instead of the bullet; why the killing of prisoners was forbidden: They did not
    seek to destroy individual men but the very human species itself, by inducing conditioned reflexes which turned
    men into creatures as obedient as robots and as ferocious as wounded tigers rabid with hatred of humanity. A
    dead tiger could not be used to destroy others.
    More than 200 had passed through the unmaskings, and with the constant acceleration of the increasing
    numbers, it could have been predicted that within six months every inmate of the prison would have been
    thoroughly re-educated, if nothing untoward happened.
    But something did happen, unexpectedly.
    1)I. e., the principles and doctrine of the Legion. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XXII
    THE UNLEASHED DOGS
    Without previous warning, on the evening of November 14, 1951, more than two years after the Pitesti
    experiment was begun, orders came to stop all unmaskings; not suddenly and abruptly but gradually, as a new
    phase was to be introduced. In other words, the phase of “violence” (i. e., beatings) was to be superseded by a
    new phase modeled to some extent on the method used at the canal, but with better surveillance. The
    unmaskings did not, as a matter of fact, end until February or March of the next year, when Colonel Zeller of
    the Securitate appeared. He came on an official mission, that of increasing production in the prison workshops,
    which meant sending as many prisoners as possible into them. To this end, most of the re-educators as well as
    the re-educated ended up having to go to work, and the whole prison population was shifted around. The
    reassignments to shop or group produced an entirely new mixing of students with other prisoners. This changed
    the atmosphere everywhere; it became indescribably poisoned.
    The students were no longer in positions of command, yet their whole re-formed character was conditioned to
    control others through unmaskings. So, since the O. D. C. C. ‘s right to beat prisoners had been revoked, they
    took it upon themselves to inaugurate their own form of discipline at Gherla and, for the next two years they
    maintained, with the help of a naturally cruel administration, a state of terror unique in the annals of prison
    history.
    Whether in workshop or cell, at the workbench or in the queue waiting for soup, in the lavatory or the shower,
    at any time, the re-educator would listen, all ears, to hear “what was being discussed,” and would inform the
    administration promptly and pointedly so as to keep the reprisals as close to the spirit of unmaskings as
    possible.
    Punishment for imaginary crimes was multiplied mercilessly. Incarceration, severe beatings, solitary
    confinement with minimal clothing, halving of food rations at the end of twelve hours of slave labor, the more
    severe regimen of being fed only once every three days — these constantly supplied a special section with more
    and more tuberculosis cases, and the cemetery with hundreds of bodies.
    After the right of the re-educated to torment was revoked, the torturing was by Communists directly, and they
    used their best qualified individuals to do it, namely the prison’s political officers and especially their chief,
    Lieutenant Avadanei.
    As was normal Communist procedure, Director Gheorghiu was transferred to some other place and in his stead
    was brought in a new director, Captain Petre Goiciu. Formerly a tinsmith with the Romanian Railways in
    Galati, he was a Bulgarian notorious for his ferocity, which exceeded that of Maromet, the director of Jilava
    prison. As his assistant, and chief of production, Lieutenant Mihalcea, another degenerate maniac, was
    appointed.
    This trio, Avadanei, Goiciu and Mihalcea ruled the prison for years, zealously executing orders and competing
    with one another for the highest marks in sadism, until they were rewarded with promotion in the Party
    hierarchy.
    Around Christmas of 1951, Turcanu and ten of his collaborators were called to the prison’s main office, where
    they were put in chains and sent away by van, no one could imagine why. Everybody soon learned about their
    departure and thought the unmaskings at Gherla had either come to an end or reached their final stage so that
    Turcanu was no longer needed, and had perhaps been transferred to take up his long-awaited and much
    anticipated activities at Aiud. Turcanu had often bragged, “Soon I shall leave for Aiud, to accomplish the
    unmaskings of the leaders there. ”
    He and his collaborators believed that they were being taken to Aiud, the next step up for them, as just reward
    for all their hard work. A man who traveled with them in the same prison van later related, “During the entire
    trip, all the way to Jilava, they all sang, and enjoyed themselves as if they were going home. When we drove by
    Aiud, and did not stop, they thought they were being taken to the Ministry of the Interior to be freed,
    remembering the promise by the Communists to reward them in consideration of their merits. Even at Jilava,
    during our first days there, Turcanu talked about novels and cowboy movies, and was relaxed, even radiant, and
    satisfied. ”
    But one day, an officer from the Ministry came into the cell occupied by Turcanu and others.
    “Why were you brought here, bandit?”
    This was the first time since the beginning of unmaskings that Turcanu had been asked that insulting question.
    “I was brought here to be freed,” he answered, somewhat disgruntled.
    “You bandit,” growled the officer, “you were brought here to account for the crimes you committed in prison.”
    And he left, slamming the door as he went.
    The smug smile on Turcanu’s face abruptly changed into an impotent grimace, and that was the last seen of him
    by any survivors. From that moment on, for more than three years, as long as the investigation lasted in the
    Ministry on Victoriei Street, none but his inquisitors and their families saw his face.
    Following his departure from Gherla, group after group of inmates, both tortured and the torturers, were taken
    to the Ministry of the Interior. As the re-educated continued to leave on these trips, the Gherla prisoners were
    sure that Turcanu must be engaged in the unmaskings at Aiud and was getting more collaborators from Gherla
    to step up the work. But after a while, some of those who had left began to r

  7. On December 16, 2010 at 10:08 am hoff2 said:

    Following his departure from Gherla, group after group of inmates, both tortured and the torturers, were taken
    to the Ministry of the Interior. As the re-educated continued to leave on these trips, the Gherla prisoners were
    sure that Turcanu must be engaged in the unmaskings at Aiud and was getting more collaborators from Gherla
    to step up the work. But after a while, some of those who had left began to return, and the strict orders by the
    Ministry not to utter a single word about the reason for their trip to Bucharest, was not respected by all of them.
    Little by little, almost everybody except those who fanatically believed in the practice of re-education by
    violence began to realize that an investigation was going on. But no one really believed that punishment of
    Turcanu was conceivable; they did not understand Marxist dialectics, and so reasoned on the basis of their poor
    “reactionary” logic. So almost everyone remained sceptical, believing this was only a new trap. Besides, no
    sensational purging had taken place in the higher echelons of the Party, and nothing had changed at Gherla
    either, where terror still ruled and everything was proceeding according to the most perfect Communist pattern.
    Furthermore, as time went by, the terror intensified, punishments becoming more severe for infractions that no
    inmate had ever heard of. Lieutenant Avadanei was more and more brutal and the spirit of O. D. C. C.
    continued to dominate undiminished over the entire body of prisoners.
    But on the dark depths of terror at Gherla, like a glimmering light, a reaction was beginning.
    CHAPTER XXIII
    THE SECOND PHASE
    The reaction began with prisoners who escaped unmasking because the process had been abandoned. Some,
    who had been fortunate enough to escape that hell, knew nothing of the unmasking technique and could not
    understand what really had happened. They knew nothing of the terrifying moulding of a “new man” or of the
    depth of the inflicted wounds, which many of us believed could never heal. Others, who had come into direct
    contact with students and personally experienced the nature of the monsterman that had been created over a
    period of five years, nevertheless asked themselves in astonishment when given time to think, “Can these things
    really be true?”
    What constitutes a still greater paradox, however, is that a large number of victims, even among the students,
    could not see that they had been used as guinea pigs in an experiment. They regarded what had happened as
    nothing more than a passionate unleashing of the hate normally generated by the Party’s ideology, or as a sort of
    drunkenness that broke the dams of reason when the Romanian Communists found themselves the beneficiaries
    of an undreamed-of victory.
    The body of prisoners who had not been re-educated fell into several classes according to the way in which they
    viewed and judged the phenomenon.
    The majority did not comprehend at all what it was all about; they perceived only the physical aspects, the
    beatings or overt wrongs done directly to them, and they judged the whole phenomenon in those terms, which
    after all were of only secondary importance. Most of these prisoners came from uncultivated backgrounds and
    were by nature disposed to interpret everything only through what they could see with their own eyes. Their
    reasoning was quite simple: “Yes, I know they suffered; I myself was tortured during my investigation, and
    perhaps I wronged others. But why did the students not stop their nefarious activity immediately, when they
    were dispersed to workshops or work colonies? Why did they continue to serve the administration and harm
    other prisoners? Was it just to feather their own nests?” Discussion with these persons was quite difficult. Their
    attitude was a simple one, without subterfuge and not openly hostile. To the query, “What did you do to help the
    students come back to normal?” they would answer, “They were better educated than we and therefore better
    able to understand what was happening to them. How could I risk my skin when I knew that if I got close to one
    of them in good faith, he would immediately denounce me as an enemy of the administration, and then where
    would I be? I’d have to suffer the consequences!” And they would cite the example of workers who initially
    wanted to help but were betrayed.
    A second class, small in number, was made up of those who, prior to their arrest, had generously collaborated
    with the Communists, hoping thus to be forgiven their membership in various political parties. In any
    discussion, these men deliberately created confusion between their own voluntary acts of collaboration and acts
    resulting from conditioned reflexes. Their reasoning was even more elementary than that of the simpler folk.
    “Man’s soul is weak,” they explained, “and subjected to fear and pressure, to hunger and the uncertainty of the
    morrow; it gives in; it cannot stand fast in a position of resistance when faced with and pressed by the forces in
    power. ”
    There was yet a third class composed of individuals who all their lives had done nothing but seek positions of
    vantage. They posed as victims, with a thinly disguised intent of making themselves heroes of resistance, then,
    equipped with a record of imprisonment, they intended to make political hay out of it, in some cases, as agents
    provocateurs. This class avoided contact of any kind whatsoever with the world of the re-educated.
    But a few of those incarcerated at Gherla — their numbers increased as time passed — tried to understand the
    phenomenon and the real motives for the experiment. They understood what you could call
    counter-re-education, adopting an attitude of uncompromising hostility toward everything that smacked in the
    least of the spirit of re-education. This brought them into conflict, not with the administration, as would
    normally have been the case, but with the re-educated students so strongly affected by the experiment that they
    seemed to have identified themselves with it. Any questioning of the new truths they professed with such
    fanaticism constituted a new torture almost unendurable — perhaps as painful morally as their unmaskings.
    Endeavoring to clear a path toward re-establishment of contact with all the re-educated who had been consumed
    in the inferno at Gherla was a work that often was punished by incarceration — which, in a Romanian prison,
    meant confinement in a cubicle whose dimensions are such that the prisoner is forced to remain in a slightly
    stooped, standing position; he can neither sit nor lie down nor stretch up.
    Thus much time had to pass before the atmosphere changed sufficiently to make living together in cells
    bearable, and reciprocal mistrust was dispelled. And in the meantime, the suffering caused by the re-educated
    was great.
    CHAPTER XXIV
    INHUMAN PENALTIES
    The scene takes place in the Gherla prison yard, several months before Turcanu and his collaborators were
    transported to the Ministry of the Interior.
    An inmate walks in an inner courtyard surrounded by the four walls of the buildings, an area of several hundred
    square yards. His hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed, he was deep in his own thoughts when some
    noise made him lift his head and look up. That instant, Martinus appeared in front of him.
    “Bandit,” said Martinus, “you look skyward, believing that the Americans will come from there?”
    The inmate lowered his head without a word.
    “Bandit, why do you lower your head? You look at the ground because you despise me, is that it?” A prison
    guard who stood nearby watched and smiled.
    The inmate was ready to answer, since he did not know this fellow Martinus, did not know at the time what was
    going on on the fourth floor, and besides he did not like being addressed in this manner. But one of his
    cellmates who did know was able to restrain him with a look. In a cautious whisper he said, “Don’t answer. This
    is the most powerful man here, below the director. He can do anvthing to you. ”
    The inmate stared after the departing Martinus, who did not wait for an answer but wrote down the victims
    name to be scheduled for unmaskings. He had guessed by the inmate’s silence and look that he was another
    “enemy of the working class”!
    In the same courtyard, at the hour when the night-shift goes to work, two pallid-faced inmates were talking. A
    student slowly edges closer to eavesdrop on the pair. There is some racket in the yard, due to the unrest of
    several hundred prisoners who have been waiting for more than an hour for the roll call before going into the
    workshop. The two continued their conversation, unaware of the eavesdropper. The next day one of the two was
    ordered to report to the political officer. When he arrived, he was given a round of slaps in the face. Surprised,
    he asked why.
    “Bandit,” he was told, “you dare ask why! Do you not want to come to your senses? What were you discussing
    about Hitler last night as you stood in line waiting to go to work?”
    After more slaps and kicks, more yelling and swearing, the desperate inmate frantically tried to recall
    everything they had talked about, and finally remembered that his friend had asked him why he looked so ill.
    He had answered that he had an “icter recidivist,” which is Romanian for “return of an attack of jaundice. ” The
    eavesdropper heard instead Hitler redivivus (Latin for “Hitler revived”) and had reported to the political officer
    that the two had been discussing politics, which was forbidden, and hoping for the return of Hitler!
    Any information reported by the re-educated was accepted as absolutely the truth and the denounced inmate had
    not the slightest possibility of defending himself successfully. It is not that the political directorate of the prison
    believed that the re-educated ones never lied, but whether their reports were true or not, they provided an excuse
    for punishment, which is all the officers were after anyway. They considered each inmate a personal enemy
    who deserved nothing but extermination, by any convenient means, but preferably through routine procedures.
    So long as the entire shop and technical office leadership was entrusted to the students, the oppression by the
    administration was not exercised directly, but through student intermediaries. They were the ones directly
    responsible for whatever went on in the workshops, the quality and quantity of products, for discipline and for
    output. Whoever did not show enough zeal was considered an opportunist, indifferent to being a leader, and
    consequently sent “to work down below,” which is the Communist term for being downgraded from a function,
    but here really meant to be sent down to work under infernal conditions.
    Large numbers of the re-educated could not be employed as administrators because, contrary to the prevailing
    bureaucratic practice, the positions were few. Those students who did not excel in re-education practices were
    sent to work side by side with the rest of the prisoners. And in order to get promoted to a desk job, which some
    of their colleagues held, they almost killed themselves working, exceeding the norms by truly phenomenal
    percentages. Other workers began to exceed their quotas, not so much to get into the good graces of the political
    officer as to be left in peace by the re-educated.
    Thus began a hellish competition. The “norm-setters” had a very special mission: to observe the quota
    production as closely as possible and report within twenty-four hours any increase. Next day, the increased
    production became the norm, and the cycle began anew. It was not too long before the initial quota was
    exceeded by 250%, which then became the new minimum quota! To show you how difficult work became
    under these conditions, I shall give one example out of thousands that occurred in Gherla prison.
    In the winter of 1952, an order of tubs for washing clothes was received from the military. The riveting of the
    sheet metal lining the tub on the inside was initially timed at 92 minutes. A prisoner was expected to put out
    eight units in his twelve hours of work. Three months later the re-educated reduced the time to 30 minutes, a
    speed-up of 300%. When I was put on shop work, my quota was 28 tubs in 12 hours. During the summer of
    1953, this was increased to 38 in 12 hours. A worker who riveted 10 tubs in one shift during the winter was
    considered as exceeding the quota; by summer, if he did 35, he was punished for not meeting his quota, and put
    on half-food rations.
    The student informers and the sadistic administrators cooperated efficiently in keeping always full the
    incarceration cells, the black room, and the isolation holes — the three ordinary means of punishment. I shall
    describe them for you.
    Incarceration cells. These were tall, narrow, box-like structures about 6 feet high and 16 inches square. A
    prisoner was forced to stand in one for from eight to fifteen days, except when he was taken out for work each
    day. If, as frequently happened, the numbers of prisoners exceeded the number of box-stalls available, two
    prisoners at a time were squeezed into each vertical coffin and locked in. To force their bodies in, the guard had
    to use his fists, kicks, and much swearing before getting the door finally pushed tight enough against their
    bodies to be locked.
    By the end of the first two days, the prisoners’ legs turned into stumps, with no feeling in them, and the body,
    due to lack of mobility, restricted circulation, and the kidneys’ inability to function normally, took on a queer
    shape. But this form of punishment ran its normal course, as I have said, in from eight to fifteen days, with
    prisoners extracted for the 12-hour work period each day. In graver cases, however, the director decided the
    victim should spend all his time, day and night, in the box except for two trips to the lavatory.
    The worst feature, perhaps, was that these boxes were set directly on concrete flooring so that in sub-zero
    weather the wretches locked within were turned into frozen mummies.
    Hardly any one was able to pass twelve hours at a stretch in one of these boxes without passing out. This was
    caused partly by a lack of air. The only source of air provided was a small opening of a few square inches in one
    side, but if there were two men in the box, the back of one covered up the hole, making breathing more and
    more difficult. Fortunately, as more boxes were built by the prisoners themselves, the boards were loosely fitted
    with a space of one to three millimeters left between them through negligence, or through … foresight, allowing
    a little air to reach the victims.
    When all boxes were full to capacity (and never in the three years of the O. D. C. C. terror were they
    unoccupied, not even for a few hours), the prisoners were crammed into a black room.
    The Black Room. Every prison in Romania had one or more. The rooms were called “black” because they had
    no windows, air or light, with only one door into the corridor of the prison. About nine feet square, they were
    designed to hold two prisoners, but director Goiciu would put as many as thirty or even more unfortunates into
    this small space. Prisoners were stripped to underwear and if necessary crushed one over the other in this
    permanently vitiated atmosphere, with but a single uncovered bucket, no bed, no blanket, no water, nothing to
    lie on but the cement floor or the bodies of those no longer capable of standing up. Nobody could sleep. If in
    winter this crowding was somehow bearable because the bodies warmed each other, in the summer it became an
    indescribable inferno.
    No water was allowed in this black room, on orders of the director, and the stench in the place became
    unbearable. In order to get to the bucket an almost impossible effort was necessary and consequently many
    renounced it. And terrible scenes took place in this writhing mass of suffering men. In order not to urinate on
    the floor, out of a sense of decency, the prisoners actually fought to get places near the bucket, even though
    there the stench was unbearable. Summers brought on an endemic attack of boils, winters caused pneumonia
    that became galloping tuberculosis. The spirit of irony among the prisoners was yet alive however. They
    christened the two places of torture “mon caprice” (the incarceration box) and “mon jardin” (the black room).
    Isolation. A third form of punishment, more grim and more dangerous than the others, was the regimen of
    isolation. An entire floor of the old prison was reserved for those whose guilt was considered too great for a
    sentence of only ten days in an incarceration box, or three weeks in the black room. Isolation carried a sentence
    of three months or longer, and though the prisoners were apparently separated from the floor reserved for those
    dying of tuberculosis, the brooms for housekeeping, the barrels of water, and the clothing to be laundered, were
    all thrown together so that germs could be spread freely over both floors. The isolation prisoners were permitted
    a walk of 15 minutes every day; the rest of the time the yard was used for the sick “who had more need of fresh
    air.” This deliberate mixing of the sick and the healthy was nothing other than premeditated homicide. But who
    could make even a gesture of protest?
    Nevertheless, knowing the great risk to their health, the prisoners committed premeditated acts of gross
    disobedience in order to be sent to isolation; at least they could sleep or lie down all day there. But things
    changed. A re-educated inmate was responsible for ending this prisoners’ paradise. While in isolation, he
    reported to the director that prisoners coming there did so on their own initiative, in order to get out of working
    in the shop. Immediately, food rations were cut in half, and to the most recalcitrant, cut to one quarter; beatings
    for no reason were initiated, on invented charges; and because the political officers were accountable to nobody
    there, they turned the torturing of prisoners into a daily ritual of entertainment.
    The contribution of the re-educated was to supply a constant stream of occupants for the incarceration box, the
    black room and the isolation floor. Of their victims so punished, more than 75% contracted tuberculosis, and
    ended in the cemetery. The director permitted the prison doctor to transfer a prisoner to the T. B. section only
    after blood appeared in his sputum. But by then his fate was sealed.
    I shall give you one example.
    A youth of about twenty years named Onac, a peasant from the Bihor region, had been condemned because he
    “wanted to overthrow the regime,” but, having the strength and the pride, it seemed, of the very mountains
    where he was reared, all the harassment of the administration, all the provocations of the re-educated could not
    budge him. His determined posture made him hated by the stoolpigeons and he told them off at every
    opportunity; while they in turn kept their eyes on him, looking for the first opportunity to denounce him to the
    director.
    One day, as they walked toward the shop, this opportunity came. Onac, to again show his contempt for one of
    the informants near him, turned to one of his friends saying, as he pointed up to the corridor bell, “This bandit
    ought to be hanged by the bell’s tongue, for he is one of the worst. ” Since Onac was imitating the manner and
    language of the re-educated, the informant could see that they were talking about him and reported Onac’s
    remark in this twisted fashion:
    “The director is going to be hanged on the bell’s tongue when the Americans arrive!!”
    Without any further investigation, Onac was given 15 days in the box. It was winter. Dressed only in shirt and
    underpants, he was there only a few days before contracting pulmonary congestion and the doctor, also a
    prisoner, prescribed the available drugs and wanted him sent to the infirmary. But instead, the director threw
    him into the black room, where his congestion turned into pneumonia, then into galloping tuberculosis. In less
    than two months after his incarceration, mountain-strong Onac met his death. When it was known he would die,
    he was moved into a cell serving as a morgue in the yard of the tubercular prisoners. Here he was visited by the
    student who caused his plight. The remorseful student, face to face with the dying man, and kneeling, tears in
    his eyes, asked for forgiveness. But the dying young giant now wasted, only stared at him, without a word.
    He died the next morning, a sad and foggy morning, the kind of which there are many in prisons. His corpse
    was left on the cement floor of the morgue where he died, for two more days. In the evening then, after
    prisoners were locked in their cells, amidst a heavy silence in the courtyard, a guard and two common law
    prisoners carried him to his grave — not in the nearby cemetery, but on the bank of the River Somes, in a spot
    where only prisoners were thrown. He was denied a Christian burial. The hole had been dug that morning but
    by evening was full of water because the river level had risen, soaking the banks up to the grass roots. When
    they threw him in, the water splashed out on the bearers — like a last protest against injustice by what was left of
    this gallant boy.
    Onac’s case was not unusual or remarkable. Every prisoner who survives will have an Onac of his own to tell
    about. More than one — perhaps thousands; the differences are only of nuance. The cause of their deaths,
    however, will be always the same: they were the victims of other victims.
    It was summer of 1953. Together with us in a cell at Gherla was, among other prisoners, a student from the
    Polytechnic Institute. The noon meal was just served, with everybody holding his mess-pan (there were no
    tables in the prison), when another student, who was the last to come in, said jokingly, “With the last transport
    yesterday, Turcanu was brought back. ” His words fell into the silence like a bombshell; the three students who
    shared this cell lowered their mess-pans, seized by panic, the one from Polytechnic being so frightened he
    dropped his to the floor and just stood there bewildered. His face became all of a sudden waxlike and he was
    incapable of uttering a single word; it seemed his entire being was seized with a weakness that paralyzed even
    his thought. All three boys looked at each other, waiting it seemed for something to happen to show them it
    wasn’t true. Actually, it was not true at all, and the jokester said so. But this did not help matters much. For three
    days and more, in spite of the endemic hunger they suffered as prisoners, the three students could eat nothing.
    At every slightest slamming of a door they shuddered and looked up in terror, expecting Turcanu to enter and
    resume the unmaskings.
    Later on, one of them told me that they were so terrified because they were just beginning to emerge from the
    madness of Pitesti and realized that the O. D. C. C. would never forgive an abandonment of the “principle of
    re-education.” Several months after this occurrence, one of the students with whom I had discussed problems in
    general as well as what had happened to them, warned me that if unmaskings were resumed we had better hide
    nothing we told each other; that as far as he was concerned, he would do just that. “For you,” he said, “as a
    matter of fact, it will of course be much easier, because you know nothing of the reality of the experiment
    proper, while I will be considered a traitor. ”
    CHAPTER XXV
    THE POWER OF COMPASSION
    The prisoners at Gherla who wanted to understand the psychological phenomenon represented by the
    re-educated, and to help the victims, if possible, had to proceed warily. They had to circumvent the opposition
    of their fellows, some of whom, fearful of risks that might involve them, tried to prevent any effort or contact,
    while others, who had experienced nothing like unmaskings, thought the re-educated must be all irredeemably
    evil by nature or else mere weaklings. One had also to avoid attracting the notice of the administration,
    particularly the political officers who kept a very close eye on the students’ activities, and finally, the
    re-educated in themselves represented an awesome danger. Extreme caution was called for; in fact, each man
    worked on his own so that, if he were denounced, others would not be exposed and the true extent of the action
    would not be suspected.
    One of the greatest difficulties was finding re-educated individuals who would not immediately report any
    remark to the political officers.
    The element on which the Communists normally relied in dealing with political prisoners was a breaking down
    of the prisoners’ faith, loyalty and trust in their country. For this reason, they kept the political prisoners
    generally isolated from news of events within as well as outside Romania, because any favorable news,
    especially of events outside the Iron Curtain, had a remarkable effect in keeping hope alive in a large proportion
    of the prisoners. The institution of unmaskings, however, stopped all leakage of information from outside, and
    the political officers saw to it that all news, filtered through their stooges to the prisoners, was always favorable
    to the socialist front. Such fabricated news, designed to poison the minds of those hearing nothing else, was
    repeated insistently month after month, until its details became axiomatic. All were convinced that Soviet
    Russia was preparing for the great world revolution that would soon conclusively establish Communist rule
    over the entire globe. If there was any doubt of this, the officers used as their best argument a recounting of
    events which purported to be proof of the defeatist policy of the West. [1]
    As to the situation within Romania, the students knew that collectivisation was already accomplished and
    generally accepted by the populace, either through fear, opportunism or belief that it was an improvement. The
    general feeling was that at least a part of the “injustices of the past” were being alleviated by the Communists,
    and that in any case everything was tending toward stabilization of a new order too powerful to be resisted.
    The prisoners, furthermore, could not learn the true state of affairs in other prisons, and they mostly assumed
    that unmaskings went on in all as they did at Gherla, and perhaps even outside the prisons too. When
    unmaskings were discontinued, they thought this was only a temporary measure and the practice would be
    resumed later on, so that everybody would have to undergo the experiment and have his character so modified
    as to be unrecognizable. This conviction was so deeply rooted in their minds that much later, when almost no
    one lived any longer under the imperium of conditioned reflexes, a group that was being transported back from
    some lead mines to Gherla and saw the window shutters of the prison closed, immediately concluded that
    unmaskings had naturally been resumed and they were to be punished for some “betrayal. ” The somewhat
    tragicomic part of it was that those who were most frightened were not the students, but the ones who had
    earlier accused the re-educated students of cowardice. The students themselves expressed no fear, only a mute
    resignation, and acceptance of implacable fatality, should the unmaskings be resumed — which they were not, as
    it turned out.
    Of all Romanian prisons, the most difficult situation from some points of view was at Gherla. The prison at
    Aiud did not have enough re-educated students from the canal to control the entire prison population, and at the
    canal there was a sizeable group who had a chance to revert toward their normal state because they had come in
    contact with a group of former army officers, mainly Legionaries, who had been sent direct to the canal from
    prisoncamps in Russia, and had thus escaped unmaskings themselves. Also, the situation there had been
    definitely stabilized following the changes brought about after the death of Doctor Simionescu. Only about ten
    students still maintained the position of the re-educated, but were kept completely isolated from the other
    prisoners and could thus do no harm.
    So, since at Aiud prison there were not enough of the re-educated to be in control, and the transferred prisoners
    did not find Turcanu there after all, or even a program of unmaskings, some students began to experience a
    moral recovery. This was partly made possible by the presence at Aiud of political prisoners who had been
    prominent personalities and influential members of their respective parties, and who did not fear the
    consequences of exercising a strong moral influence over the incoming students. They assumed that this would
    be taken for granted inside prison walls as it had been outside, and they were right. The staunchest elements of
    the Legionary Movement and of the National Peasant Party were represented at Aiud.
    The situation, however, at the three lead mines, Baia Sprie, Cavnic, and Valea Nistrului, was somewhat
    different. The pressure exercised by the re-educators was not great, for no administrator ever went down into
    the mines; it was not safe. And an “accident” could happen anytime, and who would know in the depths of the
    mines how a huge boulder happened to fall on a stool pigeon? There were no safety devices or precautions in
    the mines and accidents could and did happen very easily and frequently. So affairs down there were left largely
    up to the prisoners in those extermination pits. The re-educated thus presented no problem to the miners.
    But, as I have said, at Gherla it was different. Here, the political directorate took the legacy of re-education
    seriously, partly because the technical office, composed of engineering students, contained several re-educated
    members of notorious reputation. Octavian Tomuta, a senior at the Polytechnical School at Bucharest, as
    devoted to the administration as he was capable, was head of the planning office and responsible for the overall
    production, a sort of technical director. Every section was headed by a chief who had been re-educated, though
    officially these posts were entrusted to some non-commissioned officers of the militia. Eugen Munteanu was in
    charge of “labor and wages,” which gave him the opportunity to penalize in his own way: withholding from the
    “bandit” prisoners the pittance to which they were entitled for a month’s labor. Duta, Bucoveanu, Costachescu,
    Danila, were eight more ears for the administration. To this group could be added former Communists now
    condemned because, during Antonescu’s administration, they chose the role of informers, sending their
    comrades to prison or concentration camps. All these groups learned that there were some among the prisoners
    who were trying to help re-educated students recover their former selves, and they sought by all means to hinder
    this activity by sending those so engaged (when discovered through informers) into isolation.
    In the spring of 1953 a small number of re-educated students began to break away from the herd, seeking to
    regain their equilibrium; but some of them turned informer again and as a result additional prisoners ended up in
    isolation. The effort would have resulted in complete failure, or at least any success would have come much
    later, had not an extraordinary event taken place in the spring of the same year, namely, the death of Stalin, and
    with it the modification of Russian policy toward the occupied countries, at least on the economic level.
    Through the dissolution of various Sovroms (Soviet-Romanian exploitation companies in which Romanians put
    up the capital and raw materials, and Russians took half the profits), the Danube-Black Sea canal plans were
    disrupted. It had already been rumored that the budget allocated for the entire job had been used up when only a
    fourth of the work was finished, and that the various geological surveys had been done so superficially and
    unreliably that many repeat probings, and other unforeseen obstacles resulted in greatly increased costs. But the
    lack of finances was not the only reason the canal was given up. The Russian technicians were withdrawn when
    Sovroms were dissolved, and there were no Romanian engineers to take their places. Almost all of them had
    either been condemned to prison or murdered. And so, work at the canal was virtually paralyzed.
    It also happened just at this time that the World Festival of so-called “Democratic Youth” was opened and the
    canal compounds of forced labor stretching along the Bucharest-Constanta Railway[2] constituted a thorny
    problem for the regime. To disclose this expanse of wretched camps and dying slaves to foreign visitors
    traveling to the seashore by train would reveal the true nature of Communist “democracy,” and give the lie to
    Soviet propaganda.
    The “Ministry of the Canal” was therefore obliged to effect a hasty evacuation of all prisoners from the area and
    into the northern part of the country, where they would be hidden from the eyes of the curious. (Three years
    later, a migration in the opposite direction was to take place during the Hungarian uprisings[3] when political
    prisoners were evacuated by night into the interior, remote from the Hungarian frontier. )
    After going over the files hastily, the administration sent, in a matter of a few days, almost 2000 prisoners to
    Aiud and Gherla, in sealed cattle cars. Those considered most dangerous to the regime were initially slated for
    Aiud and included some National Peasant Party members and particularly Legionary Youth members; but they
    ended up, along with the 800 already scheduled to go there, in Gherla prison. Among the 800 were 150 students
    who had undergone unmasking at Pitesti but who, while at the canal, had experienced recovery. Thus the ranks
    of those who were trying to snatch the re-educated from the clutches of the administration swelled all of a
    sudden, and efforts with re-educated students became open and aggressive.
    The administration reacted accordingly. Incarceration boxes and the isolation section of the prison were filled to
    overflowing. Director Goiciu and Sebesteny, the new political officer, imposed penalties on prisoners so fast
    that facilities to take care of them were quite inadequate. Complicating the problem was that, as a result of a
    new directive from the Ministry of the Interior, all prisoners who had come from the canal were taken to work
    in the shop. Controlling them became impossible. Informers for the administration were openly threatened by
    youths from the canal, and even by their former colleagues in unmasking, and they began to get scared. A wave
    of disobedience that would have been inconceivable a month earlier led to failure in fulfilling work quotas. To
    the newcomers, Gherla’s working conditions seemed infernal by comparison with those at the canal, even
    though they knew several thousand of their fellow prisoners had died exhausted there.
    The severe measures taken and the penalties imposed by the administration subdued somewhat the enthusiasm
    of the newcomers, but the inevitable occurred. The wall of treachery with which the re-educated had surrounded
    themselves was shaken to its foundations. From now on, students engaged one another in open discussions,
    often argumentative, and little by little the ranks of those awakening to a new life swelled. Apathy and stubborn
    resistance changed gradually to a warm receptivity. The soul’s depth, long hidden and inaccessible, now began
    to awaken and break the chains of terror.
    And, at this strangely opportune moment, towards the end of August 1953, over 200 Legionary “campers” were
    brought from the Ocnele-Mari prison and added their contribution to the struggle for the students’ recovery. The
    “campers” were prisoners who had been arrested but not tried and sentenced, and prisoners whose terms had
    expired years before, many of them having been thrown into prison during Antonescu’s administration. They
    were shifted out of Ocnele-Mari at this time because that prison was now to be used for officers of the Ministry
    of the Interior being arrested and sentenced following various purges of the ranks of the Communist Party.
    Many of these “campers” helped in rehabilitation with enthusiasm as they found many old friends among the
    students at Gherla.
    Toward the end of 1953, the question of re-education was discussed freely in the cells, not only between
    nonre-educated and re-educated, but among the prisoners in general, with a view to clarifying the phenomenon
    per se and establishing a general position with respect to it.
    The reaction of the administration, very vigorous at first, slowly became weaker; it could no longer stem the
    current of opposition, and the intrigues and uncertainties that followed the liquidation of the first group of the
    Communist Central Committee made the administrators worried and anxious for their own future. The
    hesitations of 1953 and even more those of 1954 were fatal. The experiment began to die. Penalties were
    imposed more often than not as a kind of reflex action from hate and futility rather than in any hope of
    regaining control, of maintaining the impossible. And in losing their source of information through defection of
    their informers, the administration lost control over the soul and the thought of the prisoners.
    It is true that they tried harsher and harsher penalties for the students, but the results were just opposite to what
    they expected. The re-educated accepted their punishments as a sort of necessity for the re-establishment of a
    disrupted equilibrium, and also a kind of penance. The severe regimen and reappearance of chains in the special
    cells, became thus a certain stimulant, a verification of budding life just beginning. Communist oppression and
    brutality was again triggering a natural reaction.
    1)
    It must be remembered that Bacu wrote in 1957, when there were still some careful observers who believed
    that there was a “free world” whose governments really tried to “contain Communism” or, at least, wished to
    see the spread of the inhuman tyranny inhibited. (Tr. )
    2)I. e., that portion between Cerna-Voda on the east bank of the Danube, and Constanta. (Tr. )
    3)See Ch. XXX.
    CHAPTER XXVI
    REUNIONS
    Though many friendships had been formed among anti-Communist fighters in local organizations or in political
    groups, many were broken in the course of this tragedy especially those formed between students and
    non-students. In contrast with normal times, when every political party was organized into groups along social
    or professional lines, the “illegal” anti-Communist groups drew from all classes. Social differences were
    submerged in the common fight for liberty. That is why a kind of amalgam resulted, in which all individual
    differences were melted away, leaving the only thing that mattered: the love of country and freedom. But
    through the forced submission of students and workers to the unmasking experiment, this bond was broken; so
    that now, when circumstances again made it possible for men to meet again, a way had to be found for
    re-establishing communication between them, even within the same cell.
    Relaxed tensions following abandonment of the policy of re-education naturally did not bring the students back
    to participation in normal prison life. They were a species apart, and conscious of the profound differences that
    separated them from their fellow inmates. Thus there could be no contact between former friends, no approach
    of one to the other, no means of communication. The terrible mutation of re-education separated them as
    effectively as an impenetrable wall.
    Breaching the wall could be attempted only by those who had been able to maintain their souls intact and had,
    furthermore, a compassion which they wished to share with those so desperately in need of it.
    In order to make an initial approach even possible, one had to study and understand thoroughly the
    psychopathic phenomenon as a whole, and then try to make some aperture through which to reach the
    consciousness of the submerged personality without deepening his alienation. That was extremely difficult, and
    one had to proceed with great caution. I shall outline the way several close friends and I tried to do this.
    At first, when the atmosphere was heavy with suspicion, we would approach the re-educated persons working
    with us and pretend to agree with them, just to get a conversation started. When the climate seemed
    ameliorated, we tried to re-establish their self-confidence, but make no reference whatever to unmaskings, not
    even through a remote hint. Gradually, slowly, the concepts and values that had been destroyed by the
    re-educators were revived by a kind of inverse process as individuals were shown an affectionate sympathy and
    understanding of their suffering, and were convinced of our desire to do the right thing. Many times such
    conversations had to be continued for a long time before we could ascertain just what guilt was searing the soul
    of an individual, but as soon as we were convinced that our interlocutor was prepared to bear it, we initiated a
    discussion which included him as a guilty party. We then could proceed to probe the true problem, that of
    determining who was really responsible, personally responsible, not only for the crimes committed but for the
    initiation of the fearsome experiment in the first place.
    The majority of the students had had a faith so strong that it survived deep within them in spite of every attempt
    to destroy it, and when circumstances made it possible, it re-appeared as if from hibernation and proved to be
    the determining factor in recovery. We are concerned here only with students who were victims before
    becoming torturers or simple informers for the political officers. The other persons, who were sent into the
    prisons as tools of the Ministry of the Interior or the Communist Party itself, or who became willing stooges of
    the regime, must be left to the justice that inflexibly punishes crime.
    The resurrection of the values which had been superseded by re-education was not in itself too difficult a task,
    as frequently a simple stimulation sufficed to impel the person back to his former equilibrium. But one real
    obstacle, very hard to surmount, was the haunting fear, locked into every fiber of the unmasked victim, that any
    day the re-education terror might be resumed. Life inside the prison did nothing to dispel that fear. To be
    convincing, an argument that the terror was ended had to be based on evidence from the outside, even from the
    course of political events outside the country.
    To encourage a feeling that events might be changing things for us in prison, we used all kinds of information
    gleaned from newly-arrived prisoners, or through the good will of prison guards innocent of “class-struggle”
    theories. Under the circumstances, prisoners put their own interpretation on the various bits of information and
    fitted them to their own wishful thinking. Whether their interpretations did or did not correspond to reality did
    not worry us in the least. The essential thing was that they allayed the fears not only of the re-educated, but also
    our own, for we could never really dismiss from our own minds the possibility of an instauration of the Pitesti
    experiment, having observed the oscillation in prison of the various forms of terror from maximum to minimum
    and back, with no apparent relationship to political events in the country. So we cannot be blamed for thinking
    anything was possible.
    In addition to alleviating that fear of the re-educated, we had somehow to destroy also their conviction that
    Communist Russia was invincible — Russia where, as indeed in any country under Communist domination, one
    has no means of ascertaining what facts, if any, lie behind official claims and declarations. But the re-educated
    had lost all power of discernment. Their only truth was that which was decreed by the Communist Party’s
    official paper, and the students had no other source by which to judge it. So, attempts to refute with reasoning
    and argument the lies that had paralyzed their ability to think were worse than useless. (This can also be seen in
    the Western world, where various co-existentialists, or “useful idiots,” are products of the same intoxication. )
    We found that a well-placed joke or witticism accomplished more good than an hour of argument.
    A soul that has been submerged for years has more need for a warm word, we found, than for logical
    explanation; like a plant kept in the dark, it needs the sun more than nourishment.
    CHAPTER XXVII
    ENDLESS ISOLATION
    Prison life was filled with work in the shops, with discussions between students or with other re-educated
    prisoners, with constant hunger, and with fear of the administration. Some prisoners counted the days, others
    did not. But here again we were taken by surprise, and the monotony of prison life was broken by a typically
    illogical proceeding by the Communist management.
    On the fifth of December, the day preceding St. Nicholas’ Day, 1953, I was working in the tinsmith shop located
    in the yard of the main building. When we were let out for lunch, those who worked in the technical bureau
    went out with us and I had managed to gain the confidence of one of them, a former pupil in a trade school and
    rightly considered one of the most dangerous informers among the re-educated prisoners. Stopping for a
    moment near me and looking around to be sure he was not observed by any fellow informer, he whispered, “A
    great screening of the prisoners is in the making and all those considered ‘bandits’ will be confined to their cells
    for the whole day. Only those considered inoffensive or devoted will go out to work. ”
    “Where did you get this information?” I asked.
    “From Lieutenant Mihalcea.”
    “What do you know about me, did you see the list?”
    He did not answer, but only bent his head.
    The next morning, St. Nicholas’ Day itself, just a little before opening the doors to let us out for work, Eugen
    Munteanu, the real head of the labor and wages office, entered our cell and announced that only those hearing
    their names called out should step out and go to work. Mine was not called. This measure was not a clear-cut
    punishment; we were locked in the cell, but nothing further was done to us! So those of us whose names had not
    been called considered it a great favor, especially now that winter was coming. Most of those left in the cell had
    arrived at Gherla from the canal labor camp or other prisons after unmaskings had been abandoned — in other
    words, they had not undergone the experiment. The majority of the re-educated prisoners, however, continued
    to work in the shops.
    The Ministry’s orders in reality had provided that all work was to stop completely in order to reorganize the
    prison internally, but since various jobs for the military still had to be completed (we worked exclusively for the
    Military units of the Ministry of the Interior), it could not be stopped. Besides, we had ten vans for transporting
    prisoners under construction for the Ministry’s own use and these had to be delivered by February, 1954. So,
    though many were idled, quite a few had to be left working.
    The transition of this state of idleness was accompanied, as was to be expected, by transfers to other cells, and
    by deprivation of walks, of mattresses, and, naturally, of the meager food supplement given us when we were
    working. But this situation also did not last very long. Only two months later another shift was made, this time
    of a more severe nature.
    It was the morning of February 20, 1954, and still dark, when everybody, whether working or not, was routed
    out and assembled in the lobby of the prison’s first floor. In between floors netting had been suspended and on it
    placed hundreds of yards of straw matting, so that no one could see to the other floors. We could not imagine
    what was going to happen. A large number of surly officers and militia sergeants, some of them new and
    unknown, walked among us, forbidding any kind of talking. Accompanying them was Director Goiciu and the
    two political officers, both Hungarian, carrying a pile of papers on which presumably were written the
    prisoners’ names.
    The atmosphere was unusually tense. A fear which seemed to be contagious could be seen on all faces. Even the
    faces of the re-educated prisoners were contorted as if reflecting there the terror of their souls. The terror that
    was on the face of the student in cell X when the joke about Turcanu’s coming back to Gherla was told, was
    now to be seen on the faces of all the re-educated prisoners. I happened to be standing by a student with whom I
    was on friendly terms. He was one who had experienced a recovery from unmasking. Taking advantage of a
    moment of lack of vigilance on the part of the officer who was near us, he passed into my palm a very beautiful
    cigarette holder carved out of an ox horn. Then he asked me the question I had anticipated but for which I had
    no answer:
    “Do you think the unmaskings are going to be resumed?”
    What could I say? I tried in two or three words to calm him, maybe rather to calm myself. The approach of an
    officer prevented, however, any further speech.
    More than two hours went by with us still standing around in the lower hall that morning and with nothing
    happening, except that certain non-commissioned officers from the main prison ofnce came in, reported
    something to the director in a low voice, and left again. Some time after seven a. m., a strange roll call of
    prisoners was made, names being called in alphabetical order. Then, in accordance with their “political hue” as
    shown by their dossiers and reflected in the length of their sentences, the prisoners were divided into two
    groups, one composed of those with sentences of ten years or less, the other of those with longer terms. No
    importance was attached to type of punishment, as some in each group had been officially condemned to hard
    labor, while others only to correctional confinement.
    Thus, on February 20, 1954 began the permanent isolation which even today is in force and which constitutes
    one of the most terrible methods of slowly killing the soul and wrecking the nerves.
    One by one, in the order in which they had been called, the prisoners disappeared up the stairs that morning, to
    which floors we could not tell, where officers were waiting to lock them up in their cells. From that day on I
    was not to see again many of my prison comrades and good friends; and I did not see them again, even though
    for several years I lived under the same roof with them. Many it will be impossible ever to see again for they
    will have preceded me into the Great Beyond.
    I was sent, along with about 35 or 36 others, to a cell on the fourth floor. Almost half my companions were
    re-educated prisoners! When we got to the cell, we all tried to find a spot close to the window or to a friend, or
    lacking this, closer to an acquaintance. In such moments of uncertainty, every prisoner tries to be close to
    someone he can trust, under the illusion that perhaps this time it will do him some good! Each one, when he
    found a place, put down beside him the handful of clothing yet remaining after years of imprisonment.
    The shock of this maneuver had brusquely and profoundly impressed those who had passed through
    unmaskings. Even a large number of those who had begun to snap out of the lethargy into which they had sunk
    recoiled abruptly, adopting a “wait and see” attitude, with the obvious intention of sliding back to the side of
    those who had steadfastly maintained themselves as “convinced” re-educated.
    Even on that first day of isolation, St. Nicholas’ Day in December 1953, many of the re-educated students, who
    had been willing to discuss things and had begun to shed the “re-educated” posture, were stimulated to
    reconsider. Those who had taken part in unmaskings, particularly as heads of committees, thinking that a new
    period of re-education was about to begin, prepared for work! As a starter, they began by threatening former
    colleagues who were now openly opposed to a resumption of re-education. But to show you how
    well-conditioned reflexes still worked, even after two years, let me cite the following:
    The student A. B., who proved himself a decent enough fellow after unmaskings were abandoned, and
    denounced no one, staying in the good graces of the administration by working like a slave, changed on
    December 6th, suddenly denouncing his own uncle, who had been permitted to visit him just a few days before!
    “Why did you denounce him, when nothing justified you whatsoever?” I asked him later, when he told me about
    it.
    “If unmaskings were to begin again,” he replied, “the first accusation against me, which would be sufficient in
    itself to put me again through the whole works, would be that I had not denounced anybody. So, after December
    6, being convinced that unmaskings would soon re-commence, I began taking my own precautionary measures.
    ”
    After February, the more severe isolation period began, when political officers punished the slightest offences,
    prisoners who had been through unmaskings were sure the system was being re-instated. In our cell, on the very
    first day, for instance, the viciousness of the political officer, Sebesteny, proved itself on the back of the cell
    leader he himself had chosen! Just because at the time he entered the cell, the leader did not call “Attention!”
    loud enough, Sebesteny punished him with 24 hours in leg-irons and hand-cuffs in the notorious incarceration
    box. When the victim returned next day to the cell, his hands were covered with blue stripes and both legs were
    bleeding from the irons.
    His return triggered a dramatic development. Some of the prisoners were ready then and there to re-constitute a
    re-education committee within the cell. This did happen in other cells where the re-educated were in the
    majority with no one to oppose them and rally the non-re-educated prisoners to establish order. But our cell was
    more evenly divided, and three groups were formed almost from the start. The two extremes were represented
    by the Pitesti group and those openly opposed to them; in the center were the timorous ones, who did not take
    sides but awaited developments. At heart they were with us, but they were afraid of betraying themselves to the
    re-educated.
    The first three or four days we spent in mutual surveillance. We were waiting to see what the administration’s
    next move would be, and the re-educated were waiting for a go-ahead signal from the political officer to
    recommence the unmaskings! Since we were familiar with the sequence of the unmaskings, we decided that
    should they be resumed, in no case would we let ourselves be caught off-guard, and that we would defend
    ourselves even to the death, committing suicide if possible. So we kept in a group in one corner by the window,
    with our backs protected by the walls.
    Our taut nerves were close to snapping. Every time the door opened, all eyes turned that way, but for different
    reasons! Expecting the command, we prepared.
    When we could see the administration was limiting itself to keeping internal order, needless to say with an
    extremely severe regimen, we decided to take advantage of the situation by taking the initiative. We started by
    approaching first the timorous group, which we needed to add to ours in order to match the number of
    re-educated prisoners. Since they were afraid to talk with us, we contrived to discuss the situation so they could
    overhear us but did not need to respond. In a matter of a few days most of them appeared to be more favorable
    toward our group. We sarcastically called these discussions “ARLUS meetings,” which was a direct allusion to
    the Communist propaganda organization camouflaged under the title, “The Association for the Strengthening of
    Cultural Ties with the Soviet Union. ” These “ARLUS” discussions were not at all in a serious vein, but made
    up of many jokes about Russians, putting the Communists to ridicule on the one hand, and on the other to show
    that we were not afraid of the re-educators.
    The result was quite positive. We had known even before imprisonment that jokes with a political slant hostile
    to Communism were quite effective, and that if anything could keep hostility toward the Russian invaders alive
    it was the anecdote. The danger that humor represented to the Party was recognized, as witness the extensive
    repressive measures taken against it; there were Romanians sent to prison for ten years only because they told a
    joke ridiculing Communism.
    After a while the situation changed: there were now only two groups in our cell. The timorous had become
    courageous and joined our open discussion before the entire cell. Among the re-educated whom I knew was a
    Hungarian, who reported to Messaros, the political officer, everything that went on in our cell. Why steps were
    not taken to stop us or investigate remains a question. Only once, when I was called out as a result of my
    admitting to a guard that a chess game found in the cell was mine, he gave me to understand that he knew
    everything being discussed in the cell, and it would be better for me not to fall into his hands. Upon my denying
    it, he even told me the name of my denouncer.
    Among the re-educated in our cell, the most dangerous at that time was one Gheorghe Calciu, a former medical
    student nicknamed “L’Eminence grise[1] of Director Goiciu. ” He was one of the most devoted and determined
    products of re-education, and to some extent he took Turcanu’s place. But in the cell, he was not at all on the
    defensive, as were the others in his group, he was in fact relaxed, almost jovial. He went so far, one afternoon,
    as to recite the well-known poem by Makarenko, the “Pedagogical Poem!”[2]
    Without going into the cultural value of this verse, the very fact that he would dare to mention a Soviet writer in
    the cell, even one very much appreciated by the Party, brought laughter, at least for the time. Everyone began
    comparing Makarenko’s “pedagogy” to Turcanu’s, and the unmaskings at Pitesti were then and there labeled
    “Pedagogic Poem. ” It wasn’t very long before Turcanu was being called, in the cell, “Evghenii Simionov
    Makarenko,” and if someone wanted to know whether you had passed through unmaskings, he asked if you had
    read the Pedagogic Poem. This allusion implied, of course, that the system of re-education was also of Soviet
    origin.
    If Calciu could no longer even “in part” apply his re-educative methods in our cell, still he could not be
    prevented from keeping under perfect control those who had been his collaborators in the workshop. He did not
    stay in the cell very long; he was taken out by the political officer and sent to the infirmary. After his departure
    the atmosphere cleared completely, and the rest of the re-educated, little by little, without being pushed, or even
    challenged, began to find themselves. The month of May came, and with it an almost complete healing of
    wounds with the integration of almost all who had undergone unmasking, into the normal monotony of prison
    life.
    The few who held out through despair or stubbornness, were left to grind their teeth in impotent anger — and
    alone.
    Although our cell attained peace, the same could not be said of other cells. Where the re-educated felt they
    could still apply some of their nefarious methodology, there were quite serious disorders. In one cell, the
    re-educated severely beat the cell-mates who defied their orders; in others where they were few and tried to act
    as informers, they were themselves beaten and isolated by being completely ignored, as though they were not
    there at all.
    It is possible that some offences of the re-educated were occasioned by the others’ lack of tact. I talked with one
    who continued to denounce even after the February isolation, and I asked him why he was doing this when no
    one forced him to. He replied, “It is well that a wounded dog be left alone in peace to heal his wounds by
    licking them. If no one can help him, it’s best that nobody irritate him, lest he bite, out of pain or despair. ”
    There were some real family dramas. Take, for instance, the two brothers M., who both had been through
    unmaskings. The younger was sent to the canal labor camp with a light sentence, the older to Gherla, where he
    became head of the labor and wages service. After the canal was closed down, younger M. was sent also to
    Gherla; but now he was completely healed of his wounds. The older brother, however, continued to maintain
    himself “in position,” and considered his young brother a “bandit and saboteur. ” Consequently he punished him
    by cutting him off the list for food ration cards!
    Nevertheless, the younger brother wanted to convince the older of the absurdity of continuing his role, but this
    he could not do because their cells were in opposite ends of the prison. As a desperate stratagem, he declared a
    hunger strike and told the director he would not eat till he was moved into the same cell with his brother. In
    reply, the director had him put in irons, in isolation, where he persisted in his hunger strike and continued to
    lose weight. The administration told him — falsely — that the Ministry of the Interior alone could make cell
    assignments, and that the matter had been referred to it. Several days later they told him his brother had been
    transferred to another prison and he would have to give up his hunger strike. But the price he had to pay was
    high: he ate only once in three days, slept on iron bars without a mattress or cover. A categorical disposition of
    the case by the Ministry of the Interior interdicted the sharing of the same cell by members of the same family,
    and the interdiction was zealously extended to apply to known friends as well as relatives.
    Personally I had to deal with a case as painful as it was strange. A student of mathematics from the
    Polytechnical School of Bucharest, condemned to 25 years, who still maintained his posture of re-educated even
    after the isolation, was caught by a guard with a soap tablet on which he had made some mathematical
    calculations. He was given 40 days in isolation in a cell adjoining ours. I tried to talk to him by means of
    adapted Morse code, but he did not know these signals. I noticed that the windows of his cell and ours were at
    right angles to each other, and not far apart. As a heavy shutter protected us from the eyes of guards in the
    courtyard below, and I placed a cell-mate as guard at our door’s peephole, I was able to converse with the
    engineering student at the window. He was obsessed with the idea that the Russians were all-powerful and was
    convinced they would rule the world.
    “You will see,” he said, “maybe later, but certainly, that the Russians will conquer the entire world. It cannot be
    otherwise. ” And again: “The West is morally decomposed; it is a swamp in which everything that is pure
    drowns. The Russians will bring their punishment, for the West, when it had the power, made no use of it when
    it could; now it is too late; the Russians are a sort of destiny!”
    He was a man of superior intelligence, but all my efforts to show him that everything he had been saying was
    only a reflection of his subconscious terror ended in failure.
    Several days later I, too, was put in isolation for 10 days to sleep on iron bars in a heatless cell (this was
    February, 1955) and for what reason? The excuse was that I was accused of having written on the wall
    paragraphs in several foreign languages, including German (a much decried language at the time, of course),
    and since I was the only member of the cell who knew German, I was guilty. When I was returned to the cell
    after isolation, I could not learn if the fellow in the other cell had changed his thinking or not, because he had
    been transferred somewhere else.
    Penalties inflicted by Director Goiciu on students were incomparably greater than those given non-students. He
    was constantly trying to regain some of his lost ground, but in vain. Contempt for him only increased. If an
    ordinary prisoner received two weeks of isolation, a student prisoner got twice that, plus a severe regimen. Take
    the case of the student Petre N., for example, who had the temerity to stand up to the political officer when the
    prison van delivered him to the Gherla depot. He was immediately sent to isolation with 20-pound leg-irons for
    a month in the dead of winter in addition to the severe regimen. When he had served out his time, the political
    officer asked him if he did not regret his impudence at the depot.
    “Your regulations,” replied the cold, starved student, “do not include any punishment strong enough to match
    the utter contempt I have for all of you. ” So uncertain of itself had the administration been that the official
    merely gnashed his teeth and turned his back on the student, leaving him in peace.
    After thin

  8. On December 16, 2010 at 10:10 am hoff2 said:

    “Your regulations,” replied the cold, starved student, “do not include any punishment strong enough to match
    the utter contempt I have for all of you. ” So uncertain of itself had the administration been that the official
    merely gnashed his teeth and turned his back on the student, leaving him in peace.
    After things returned to normal, I tried many times to compare the way a man behaved after he recovered from
    re-education with the way he had behaved before undergoing unmasking. At first sight, I could not see a great
    deal of difference: the same self-contained bearing, the same serious preoccupations, the same goodness and
    benevolence. But unseen was a real abyss between what he had been and what he had become. The unmaskings
    left scars on the surface, and down deep there was still an open, bleeding wound. I could but wonder about a
    meeting between such men and their victims, if they were to meet in freedom — even though almost all
    prisoners understood the drama and did not harbor resentment against those who had denounced or tortured
    them. Man can forgive, because he must; but he can never forget, for forgetting is not in his power. What was
    done cannot be undone; and the persecutor can forget no more than the victim, whether or not he did it against
    his will, against his faith.
    I could not but wonder whether these men would ever be able to return to normal living, or would be able only
    to simulate having done so, remaining in the depths of their souls forever ruined, crucified on their own
    helplessness.
    1)
    A sardonic allusion to Father Joseph, the outwardly austere and unassuming, but wily and feared, confidential
    coadjutor of Cardinal Richelieu. Romanians translate this “gray eminence” as “The Brain. ” (Tr. )
    2)
    Anton Semenovich Makarenko (1888-1939), a Soviet poetaster, was best known for his “Pedagogical Poem,”
    a dreary effusion in Russian verse filled with the factitious (and fatuous) sentiment that characterizes all the
    “literature” manufactured for the Bolsheviks as part of “proletarian culture. ” The “Pedagogical Poem” was
    first published in 1935, and has been frequently reprinted in Russia. The humor in the reference to Turcanu in
    the next paragraph lies, of course, in using the Russian form of Turcanu’s first name (Evghenii for Eugen),
    alluding to his ancestry with a middle name that resembles Makarenko’s, and then giving him the Soviet
    hack’s last name. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XXVIII
    THE TRIAL
    I return to A. Camus’s words quoted in the first chapter: “Philosophy can change murderers into judges. ”
    The tragedy of the Pitesti prisoners, too, has its fatal denouement like any other drama.
    There exists an ineluctable “truth,” naturally Communistic, that anything that serves the Party is “just,” is
    appreciated and encouraged. If later, for reasons never sufficiently clear, this “just” no longer serves some new
    Party line, it immediately becomes “unjust” and is condemned, “reproved with indignation. ” I do not think
    examples are here necessary. The numerous “ideological leaders” who took the road to exile or the firing squad
    in the Soviet Union during the last decade alone are sufficient proofs of this policy. Throughout my years in
    prison, I often shared a cell with former Party members. Among them were some who had done great service
    for the Party and had spared no effort to apply “the line. ” They were made scapegoats and classified with the
    enemy without the slightest hesitation. In response to their protests at such treatment, they always and
    everywhere received a stereotyped answer something like this: “For your good accomplishments the Party will
    raise a statue in your honor; for the bad ones, you are paying right now,” even if what they had done was simply
    carry out with strict fidelity the Party orders before they changed direction.
    In the case of unmaskings, it was only logical that those who voluntarily offered themselves to start the
    experiment should have been rewarded with freedom at the end of their term of service. Rewarded they were,
    but with the fire from an automatic pistol!
    The whole experiment had been born out of evil and lies. It was through wickedness and deception that it had to
    end. But in order that everything might be consummated within the framework of “Communist legality,” and
    bear the imprint of “justice,” a trial was staged. In the dock sat the victims; official representatives of the Party,
    the real implementors of the crime, sat on the bench.
    There had been many so-called “sensational” trials. The Communists saw to it that people became accustomed
    to them and, seemingly to keep the memory fresh, would stage another every now and then. To Westerners, this
    may seem an odd way of administering justice, but of course, they are used to “bourgeois” justice and do not
    comprehend the higher form of Marxian dialectics.
    Even the most cynical of assassins seeks a loophole in his indictment and even a madman does not receive a
    death sentence with joy, but under Communism everything can be easily arranged ahead of time by means of
    torture and lies, such as “a publicly admitted mistake is half forgiven. ” That is, until the compromising
    declaration is obtained from the victim! The rest is only too well known; when the hangman’s noose tightens
    around one’s neck, anybody is willing to make a small concession if it will save his life — rather the hair than
    the head, as the proverb goes.
    In the Communist type of justice the trials are not to find proof of guilt as such but to provide a pretext for a
    condemnation demanded by the Securitate — a condemnation not of any deed, but of a person as a potential
    enemy or as no longer useful. Thus the Bucharest Tribunal that tried Turcanu and his fellows was seeking a
    justification for condemning those who for three years had done nothing but execute with zeal the orders given
    them by the initiators of the experiment. How the declarations of the prisoners were obtained is not known, but
    we do know the general methods employed.
    The initial intention, according to what transpired unofficially, was to stage a public trial with newspapermen
    and “indignant” workers’ delegations, with photographers and plenty of publicity. But something made the
    Tribunal change its mind, possibly the pre-trial interrogations of the various witnesses who were to testify.
    There was some risk of an upset, and the Party could have then been exposed in its true light just at the critical
    moment when it wanted to conclude the drama of its experiment with a “legal” finale.
    Why did they feel a trial necessary? Liquidating those who “knew too much” could have been accomplished
    more simply and quietly, at night somewhere, for “trying to escape while under escort,” a procedure that was
    not new and had produced satisfactory results some years earlier when, on the night of November 30, 1938,
    Codreanu and thirteen of his followers were assassinated by King Carol’s henchmen. Did they need a
    justification in legal form for concluding an unsuccessful experiment and eliminating those who might talk
    inopportunely? Perhaps in time we shall know.
    At any rate, the “show trial” to teach the people a lesson never took place, but instead hearings were held behind
    closed doors, attended only by prison directors, interrogating officers, and Communist political personalities
    little known or completely without any contact with the people.
    One was able to learn very little of what went on in the secret proceedings and nothing at all of what the
    accused had to say. Some aspects of the trial were learned from Party members who could not keep their
    mouths shut and from the forty witnesses, who were all prisoners who had passed through unmaskings or were
    victims of some sort.
    By collating this information with various slips of the tongue on the part of political officers in the prisons, the
    course of the trial can partly be reconstructed. Witnesses testified separately, none being allowed to be present
    at any proceedings except the one at which he answered the questions asked him by the Tribunal’s president.
    They were not told who were the members of the Tribunal, whose names were never made public, but they
    could see that the judges and the prosecutor were superior officers, perhaps from the cadres of military justice.
    [1]
    It would seem impossible for the Communists to find a way of exculpating themselves, but, no matter how
    absurd it sounds, they found one: they alleged that the unmaskings at Pitesti had been initiated by the leaders of
    the nationalist student group!! Crimes were committed against the prisoners by these nationalists in order to
    blame the Communist regime and discredit it in the eyes of the people and of international opinion!
    The military prosecutor demanded punishment of the “nationalist” defendants for crimes against humanity, for
    all the crimes were blamed on them. And to bolster the monstrous lie and make it hold together, they implied
    that there was someone from the outside who must have given directives to those inside the prison who were “in
    the conspiracy. ” It was then no problem at all to prove that there must have been a responsible person who
    established the liaison between the leader from abroad and those in prison. Several persons were considered for
    this role, among them a lawyer from Iasi, but in the end they decided upon a student. If my memory serves me
    well, he was named Simionescu; in any case, whatever his name, he was tortured for months in the Ministry of
    the Interior, and kept continually in leg-irons and handcuffs, to force him to recite the testimony dictated by the
    Securitate. [2] But Simionescu refused. Had they really insisted very much, and been determined to produce the
    testimony they wanted, they could, of course, have done so; all they would have needed was time to brainwash
    the unfortunate individual whom they chose and teach him his “confession. ” But a sudden — and inexplicable –
    urgency did not allow time for proper preparation. After three years of pre-trial investigations and interrogation
    of over a hundred prisoners who had passed through unmaskings, the case was brought to trial with a haste that
    can be explained only by a sudden need[3] to dispose of it as quickly as possible.
    In the end, allegations of the responsibility of persons outside the prison were discarded or suppressed, leaving
    the only responsible head Turcanu!
    Prisoners put in the dock as defendants at this trial were: Eugen Turcanu (“And lo! his name led all the rest!”);
    Alexandru Popa, nicknamed Tanu; Martinus; Constantin Juberian; Cornel Pop; Levinschi; Doctor Barbosu,
    official physician of Gherla prison, now become useless and therefore dangerous; and several others.
    The trial was started in October 1954, but it is not known how long it lasted. Testimony of the 40 witnesses for
    the prosecution took several days. Sentences were pronounced around the middle of December, but news of the
    trial did not reach our prison till February or March 1955, coming first through Jilava or some other prison from
    which a prisoner was transferred. I learned it from a person in the prison’s infirmary, who transmitted the news
    by a hand put through a crack in the window shutter. Later, several prisoners confirmed the report, as did,
    indirectly, the Military Tribunal of Bucharest when it published the death notice of-one of the condemned.
    The witnesses testified under heavy guard and were “closely counseled” by the officers interrogating them at the
    Ministry. As before mentioned, they were introduced into the hearings one at a time, so they knew nothing of
    the over-all proceedings.
    Nothing was withheld during the hearings. The smallest details of the unmaskings were fully described, from
    the beatings to the ordeal of the mess-pan filled with feces; from the torturous squatting to the insulting of
    everything the prisoner held dear. But accusations were brought only against those who had actually inflicted
    the tortures, and who now sat in the dock as the accused. In reality, everyone present knew that they were
    merely the front men for the real culprits.
    Among the witnesses were two workers from Gherla, one of whom, it will be remembered, pleaded with the
    inspector to end the unmaskings, and the other, who attempted to commit suicide by slashing his wrists in the
    isolation cell with broken glass from the window pane. They told of the promises made to them by the officers
    to whom they reported the state of affairs, and of the fact that their subsequent tortures became more brutal and
    bloody than before. The president of the Tribunal tried unsuccessfully to divert their answers by claiming that
    they were not relevant to the questions asked, which pertained only to the defendants and the crimes they
    allegedly had committed.
    The testimony of the defendants is not known. Whether they defended themselves by revealing the identity of
    those who were really responsible or assumed the entire responsibility themselves, hoping thus to win the
    indulgence of the Securitate, is of little importance, for they were not there to be tried, but to be condemned. It
    was reported specifically of Turcanu that he had admitted everything and had assumed complete responsibility
    for the crimes imputed to him. It did not matter whether he did or not; his fate had in fact already been decided,
    and the presiding judge was the only one of those on the bench who could be identified by any of the witnesses;
    a student, one who had been previously arrested during the Antonescu administration, recognized him. The
    judge’s name was Alexandru Petreseu and he was considered one of the most sinister characters ever thrust from
    the law schools into Romanian society. In his way, he was unique. A career military judge, he was
    Director-General of Penitentiaries during Atonescu’s administration. The Legionaries knew him well, for often
    their fate had been in his hands before his decision was reviewed by Antonescu. Although publicly a strong
    supporter of Antonescu’s dictatorship, he was also a secret collaborator with the Communists, facilitating their
    penetration into the Lugoj prison to aid Burah Tescovici, alias Teohari Georgescu. [4] Apparently about to be
    purged in 1948, as were all of his colleagues, he found himself elevated to the rank of general (he was a
    colonel) because he agreed to preside over the tribunal that condemned Iuliu Maniu. In addition to scores of
    death sentences attributed to him, he was credited with more than 100,000 man-years of imprisonment
    pronounced in trials of Legionaries alone.
    In the habit of blindly executing all the orders of the Securitate, Petrescu naturally in their 1954 “trial”
    pronounced the prescribed sentence: death for all defendants. The only sentence about which there is some
    doubt is that of Doctor Barbosu; it is not known whether he was condemned to die or be imprisoned for life.
    However, both sentences are practically equivalent in Communist prisons.
    The sentences were carried out. One of the victims, Martinus, was later called as a witness for a subsequent
    trial, but in response to the order for his appearance in court, a death certificate was produced, showing that he
    had died in 1955.
    All those tried were, naturally, identified as “Fascists,” or agents of the American espionage apparatus. It is not
    clear on what basis the persons selected for trial and execution were chosen; certainly persons equally notorious
    for equally monstrous ferocity such as Titus Leonida, Diaca, Coriolan Coifan, Hentes, and Bucoveanu, were
    never brought to trial, although they were the peers of Turcanu and even the superiors of Pop in sadistic
    accomplishments. Exempt from trial also was one of the worst offenders, Ludovic Reck, a Communist,
    condemned to prison because he had been also an informer in Antonescu’s police force. [5] With the help of
    Hentes and Juberian, he murdered Flueras by beating him with sandbags till he spat out his lungs.
    Also missing from the trial as defendants were: Captain Goiciu, Captain Gheorghiu, Lieutenants Dumitrescu,
    Avadanei, and Mihalcea, whose direct responsibility for the unmaskings was much greater than that of the
    students sentenced to death, whom they had had under their control and who had done nothing without their
    supervision and collaboration.
    Because of “technical reasons”, it is said, a second “trial” was staged, with the same kind of defendants, the
    main one this time being the student Gheorghe Calciu, nicknamed Ghita by his “friends. ”
    He was moved from Gherla in the spring of 1954 to the Ministry of the Interior for investigation. At the time of
    his departure he was still a convinced re-educator. I do not know how long he remained so, but exactly two
    years later I had a unique opportunity to learn — directly from him — about his passing through the hands of the
    Ministry and the reception they gave him.
    In 1956, in a cell of the main section of the Ministry on Victoriei Street, in fact right next to the room of the
    officer-on-duty at the front of the building (also called the Section Chief’s office), I found an inscription
    scratched on the wall, possibly with a needle, in Morse code, which shook me considerably. The sentence read:
    “Gheorghe Calciu, I was brought here to be murdered; I am innocent.”
    Close by, also scratched in the wall, toward the left corner nearer the door but not visible to anyone looking in
    through its peephole, I read the following:
    “Gheorghe Balan, I am completely innocent.”[6]
    In regard to Calciu’s trial, some fragmentary information leaked out. I learned about it shortly before I left
    Romania. The trial was held in the summer of 1957, also in Bucharest, and also before a military tribunal.
    Someone who witnessed it in an official capacity leaked a few details which prove a good deal, and place
    Calciu in quite a different light from Turcanu.
    The presiding judge was the same General Petrescu. Following the reading of the accusation, Calciu was called
    upon to answer, or rather to confess his “crime against humanity. ” To the amazement of all, but particularly of
    the investigators, the defendant defied the entire tribunal and threw back in its face the truth without any
    reservations. Calciu accused those who were in fact responsible for all the crimes committed. His diatribe was
    so unexpected that the tribunal’s presiding judge, at the request of the investigators assisting at the trial,
    suspended the proceedings till a later date. This postponement had as its aim the utilization of the known
    “methods of persuasion” frequently employed by the Securitate, this time to compel Calciu to retract his
    accusation and “assume the entire responsibility for the crimes committed. ” The trial was resumed the very
    next day, perhaps because Calciu had agreed the night before to modify his attitude. But despite the promise he
    probably gave under torture, the next day he was even more categorical. In consequence, the trial was abruptly
    postponed sine die. It is likely that Ghita Calciu never was tried and sentenced, but died a “natural” death, a
    frequent phenomenon in prisons.
    When I left the prison in 1956, the prisoners still heatedly discussed the tortures inflicted on students and other
    prisoners. There still remained isolated in various prisons several cases of which one can say that they have
    never recovered.
    After the experiment at Pitesti, the methods of torture were no longer the same. Other means of extermination,
    more scientific and more rigorous, drained away the minds of political prisoners, reducing them to the condition
    of animals.
    In order to explain more fully the system of lying and the paradoxical logic that made a crime into a moral deed,
    an enormity into a virtue, I shall relate a conversation I had in the winter of 1954 with a director-general in the
    Ministry of the Interior. (If he was not the Director-General, he was, at least, a very important personage in the
    regime. Prisoners are not told either the name or the position of the individual interrogating them. )
    After being switched for almost two months from one investigating room to another, one night at the beginning
    of March, I was taken into a room on the sixth floor and brought face to face with this very important person
    who tried to convince me of some “truths” which I had refused to recognize. Since this was not a run-of-the-mill
    type of investigation, but rather a discussion pro and con on various subjects, I took advantage of a propitious
    moment to ask him “whether it is true that at Pitesti were committed some quite strange acts that caused the
    maiming and even death of some of the prisoners. ” Taken aback, he could not control an expression of shock,
    and immediately asked me:
    “What do you know about the happenings at Pitesti?”
    “Personally,” I hedged, “I could not learn much except some allusions by several students in a discussion a long
    time ago,” and I hoped he would not press the question. He seemed satisfied with my answer and seemed
    disposed to enlighten me.
    “As a matter of fact,” said he, “it was quite a simple matter. A group of arrested students, agents of American
    imperialism, stubborn and retrograde mystics, started to torture their colleagues, in order thus to compromise
    the prison’s administration and consequently the Party. ”
    “But as I understood it,” I said, “this category of ‘retrograde’ students represented approximately eighty per cent
    of all the students in prison. Whom did they fight?”
    “They fought among themselves.”
    “To what purpose?” I asked. “I do not quite follow how this would compromise the Party. ”
    “They received instructions from outside,” he explained, “from those who are abroad and lead teams of spies
    and saboteurs; by torturing one another, the victims could accuse the Party as the culprit. ”
    “Nevertheless,” I persisted, “this seems almost unbelievable, with prisons having such a very strict system of
    internal supervision. How was it possible for these horrors to take place without the immediate intervention of
    the Ministry?”
    “We knew nothing of what happened there,” he replied. “When we finally learned about these happenings, we
    took the necessary steps and punished the guilty in order to discourage others from doing likewise. ”
    This was the kind of answer I had expected, for I already knew what had happened at Turcanu’s trial. However,
    I could not keep from replying somewhat brusquely:
    “I have been a prisoner for seven years and have passed through almost all the country’s penitentiaries. Either
    isolated, or in common cells, never could we make the slightest move without being seen by the guards in the
    halls, and I do not count the many and various searches made unexpectedly in the middle of the night. The
    rigorous surveillance to which we were subjected made impossible even the use of a sewing needle without the
    consent of the guard. How could all these things have happened without the political officers being immediately
    informed by the guards? Or is it that you had not one person of trust in all these prisons, where the acts which
    you have just described took place, not a single one to inform you of what was going on?”
    “The prison administration was in the hands of some opportunists,” he said, “enemies of the people who had
    infiltrated with the express desire to do harm. They collaborated with the bandits; but they, too, have now been
    punished as they deserved. ”
    I said nothing to this, and did not tell him any more of what I had learned about the Pitesti experiment. Nor did I
    mention that I knew that the “opportunists” he mentioned in the prison administration not only were not
    penalized, but had received promotions to higher positions; or that I knew that Turcanu, before coming to
    Gherla, had forwarded his notorious memorandum to the Ministry of which my interrogator was a member; or
    that, on the basis of extorted confessions during unmaskings, scores of trials were held after the confessions had
    passed through the hands of the Ministry; or of so many other details known to them only because they had
    been reported to them by the re-educators — or that, of course no remedial steps were ever taken.
    Several months later I was freed.
    Behind me I left the bars of various penitentiaries, Securitates, forced labor camps, and “centers for
    re-education” where tens of thousands of prisoners languish and suffer with no kind of amnesty in sight to
    lighten their punishment. Above them all, like the sword of Damocles, hovers the ever imminent danger that
    another experiment similar to, or even more “scientific” than the one at Pitesti may be staged at any time. I left
    behind tens of thousands of fellow Romanians imprisoned under the care of the same directors-general,
    subjected day and night to a program of gradual animalization, and the undermining of physical and moral
    health through total inactivity, darkened cells, constant malnutrition, isolation, a severe routine and chains –
    always chains on wrists and legs!
    Those who bore part of the responsibility are now in their graves. But they are not the most guilty.
    Some of the re-education’s victims too have left for a juster world (for not even in hell do such cruelties take
    place). Perhaps there they will find understanding and maybe forgiveness.
    On the other hand, still alive, though maimed and sick, are those who for the last ten years have been suffering
    in isolation, as have the re-educated who recovered their original equilibrium, now broken and isolated from
    every contact with the world.
    Let us hope that some day these prisoners will have to be listened to;[7] let us hope that the criminals who put
    and keep them there will one day be brought to justice, namely:
    General Nicolschi, head of the investigation brigades in the Securitate;
    Dullberger (later Dulgheru), head of the mobile brigades and transport;
    Jianu and Tescovici (alias Georgescu), both former Ministers of the Interior;
    Draghici and Borila, Ministers of the “People’s” Securitate;
    Keller, Goiciu, Mihalcea, Avadanei, Gheorghiu, Dumitrescu, Kirion, Archide, Gal, the guard Cucu, Niki,
    Mandruta, Ciobanu — all implicated in responsibility for both the torturings and the terror inaugurated by the O.
    D. C. C. in prisons and labor camps.
    To the bar of justice may all these come, and let us hope that the passage of time does not deprive them of the
    power of speech! (Various purges of the Party have been known to bring about such a condition!)
    Naturally, there are people who do not want to believe that the events which took place at Pitesti and the other
    prisons were a scientific experiment, and claim that the supporting evidence is circumstantial and not
    conclusive. Consequently, two theories have been advanced. One, the more widely held, is that the Communist
    Party merely wanted to annihilate the Romanian Nationalist Movement, which could only be done by
    destroying the young who carried the Legionary ideas and traditions and were thus a link between past and
    future.
    But the unmaskings contributed nothing to the consolidation of the Communist regime itself, for most of the
    anti-Communist resistance was already behind bars, and the unmaskings in prison did not greatly help to round
    up the remnants of opposition outside. The results did not justify the effort — could not possibly have justified
    it. And this is why:
    The years of imprisonment, with their savage privations and long duration, had already killed or neutralized a
    large part of the youth of Romania. The majority of those who passed through prisons and were released alive
    were in broken health or too experienced to expose themselves again to useless suffering. The terror, the
    memories of imprisonment, the deportations to Baragan, destroyed for all practical purposes any possible
    reactivating an effective resistance. This is a verified fact. And the several thousand men inside the prisons
    certainly could not change what had been decided by the great Dividers of the World at the “Conference
    Tables” where Europe was dismembered.
    In the event the Party should fall from power at some future time, the crimes perpetrated in the prisons would
    have made its record only so much more monstrous. The physical extermination of the students of Romania, or
    even of all the political prisoners, would have resolved nothing, for the People is a living organism that
    perpetuates itself by biological continuity. Its potential will be restored, if it is allowed to exist and reproduce
    itself for a sufficient length of time; the vacuum created by massacres will be filled by the People’s fertility.
    Killing or incapacitating an entire section of the population does not necessarily destroy an idea, for an idea is
    generated by the very biological structure of the nation in question, not by a type of man belonging to a
    particular class or generation. Then, too, there is the purely psychological factor. The persecution of an idea,
    especially by aliens who have infiltrated and seized the nation that generated it, imparts to this idea only a
    greater popularity.
    The other theory was one held especially by many students — that of pure irrational revenge. The student
    movement had been throughout four decades, until the collapse of the Romanian State, the most consistent
    enemy of Communism, the only formidable obstacle to the growth of Communist power. Our enemies,
    repeatedly frustrated over the years by the student movement, naturally accumulated in their minds a boundless
    and infinite hatred that easily found expression in retaliation by ultimate brutality the moment they achieved
    political power. Thus the “Pitesti Phenomenon” served only to prove further the utter and inhuman depravity of
    the Bolsheviks.
    But if that had been the purpose, why was the insane fury halted short of total fulfillment of its lusts? There was
    no economic, military, or (given the total secrecy) propagandist reason why any Legionaries should have been
    spared the dehumanization, and certainly no reason why any of the victims should have been permitted to
    recover their minds and even to recount what they had experienced. The only plausible or even intelligible
    reason for halting the application of the unmasking technique at that time is that the purpose of its application
    had somehow been accomplished.
    Re-education, therefore, cannot have been designed expressly to destroy a resistance already become powerless,
    or even to inflict the utmost horrors in all whom the anti-humans most hated. The aim of the experimenters
    seems to have been that of determining, on the basis of scientific data, the extent to which a man could be
    robbed of his personality and be completely and irreversibly restructured. The ultimate recovery of the majority
    of the victims proved that the transformation thus affected was not irreversible.
    1)I. e., corresponding to the office of the Judge Advocate General in the United States Army. (Tr. )
    2)
    It is noteworthy that only ordinary tortures were used, without recourse to the techniques applied at Pitesti,
    and strange that the Tribunal did not think of using one of the re-educated for this purpose. The inefficiency
    of Bolshevik underlings is often astonishing. (Tr. )
    3)Presumably orders from above. (Tr. )
    4)
    Burah Tescovici (1908-?), a Jew who early adopted the Romanian name of Teohari Georgescu to conceal his
    origin, became an active Communist agent and conspirator in 1929, if not earlier, and was considered one of
    the most dangerous aliens in the country. After the Soviet occupation of Romania, he became one of the four
    chiefs of the Communist Party in Romania and collaborated closely with the repellant and infamous Jewess,
    Ana Rabinovich (Pauker). He became Minister of the Interior in the “Romanian” government in 1947, and
    was purged in 1952. (Tr. )
    5)See ch. XIII above.
    6)
    They were probably accused of being “Fascists” and “in the pay of the American imperialists,” terms which
    were synonymous in the Bolshevik propaganda in the occupied countries of Europe — charges of which the
    two men were, of course, innocent, but to which Communist methodology required a “confession,” even
    when the “trial,” as here, was to be kept secret and so could not be used in local propaganda. The need to
    extort such “confessions,” known to be utterly false by all concerned and utterly useless in secret proceedings,
    is one of the most curious and significant traits of an alien mentality that the West can describe only as
    psychopathic. (Tr. )
    7)This hope, formed in 1958, was, of course, in vain. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XXIX
    AT JILAVA AS WELL
    Before I conclude this record, I shall mention another kind of unmaskings, identical in scope with those at
    Pitesti and Gherla, but conducted with a variation in method. The main feature of these unmaskings was the fact
    that there was no effort to dissimulate the administration’s participation in them — in fact they were openly
    conducted by the prison personnel, though through prisoners as instruments.
    In the spring of 1950 a special room was prepared at Jilava in one of the barracks in the courtyard for use in
    torturing prisoners who were awaiting trial.
    The method was very simple. A guard, usually part of the outer watch, accompanied by the head of the “secret”
    section, entered a cell and called out the name of the prisoner to be investigated. In the corridor, the prisoner’s
    head was covered with a hood so he could see nothing, The guard then took him by the arm and led him through
    the courtyard and into that specially prepared room.
    Here, his eyes still covered and with the guard’s grip still on his arm, he was subjected to a stringent inquisition
    usually based on information gathered in his cell by informers introduced for that function, or through the
    indiscretions of his various friends in other cells, or directly from the files being compiled at the Ministry of the
    Interior for his eventual trial. Identification of the interrogators was difficult, for the only means of recognition
    was by their voices, and the victims naturally supposed they must be facing officers sent from the Ministry of
    the Interior. Eventually, however, they learned that their questioners were merely other prisoners almost
    exclusively chosen from among “former” members of the Communist apparatus.
    Presumably these old Communists had sinned by agreeing to become informers for the Romanian Securitate
    during the government of Antonescu. Their leader or, in any case, the one conducting the investigations and
    directing the torture, was named Mihailov, a Bessarabian seemingly of Russian origin, arrested for having
    denounced several of his fellow-Communists during the War. Among his collaborators at Jilava, assisting in the
    “investigations,” the meanest and also the most savage was one by the name of Pascu, a mechanic by
    occupation, and a Communist arrested for the same reasons as Mihailov. I had occasion to meet him several
    years later, after he was sent to Gherla, where he continued to serve the prison’s administration as informer.
    That was why he was charged with the surveillance of the communal bath, a quite comfortable and especially
    convenient spot, where he did nothing but oversee those who bathed, and could eavesdrop on every word
    spoken. Another participant at Jilava was a Hungarian mechanic, Buchs, who was sent to Aiud in 1951 and
    there was quite discreet, behaving relatively well. (It is possible that the Securitate’s promises, later broken, had
    opened his eyes. ) In addition, it was reported that a simple worker, rather retarded mentally, was used
    particularly to conduct prolonged beatings. The team of “investigators” numbered over ten, but only those I
    have just mentioned were definitely identified.
    The first discovery that the investigators were not political officers was occasioned by an interesting
    coincidence. It so happened that before ex-Lieutenant Z. of the Medical Corps was taken out of his cell for
    another interrogation, Mihailov had been replaced. So in the barracks room, where Lieutenant Z. expected to
    hear Mihailov’s voice, the questioner had a voice quite different. Already cruelly brutalized and being an
    independent spirit (in fact, this is why he was sent off to Archangel while he was still a prisoner of war in
    Russia), he became so irritated that he snatched off the hood covering his head. To his stupefaction, seated at
    the investigating table were not the Securitate officers he expected to see, but ordinary prisoners; and the person
    who had always led him from his cell and now stood at his side was just a uniformed prison guard!
    The atmosphere that prevailed at Jilava was totally different from that at other prisons, especially because no
    one there had yet been sentenced and all imagined they would be liberated before the Communists had time to
    try them. [1] This explains in part the courage of various prisoners who refused to make “confessions” when
    taken before Mihailov. It seems also, however, that the Ministry of the Interior was not very insistent, for when
    word got around throughout the isolation cells, they “closed” the O. D. C. C. office at Jilava, though not before
    scores of “political detainees” had been tortured into bloody pulp.
    It could be that there was no direct connection between the unmaskings at Pitesti and what happened at Jilava,
    but the coincidence in time and some similarity of method make it impossible to deny that there was some
    coordination toward a previously well-determined end. It should be remembered also that Pitesti, an execution
    penitentiary, and Jilava, a stockade for the Ministry of the Interior, were the two prisons closest to Bucharest; in
    other words, the most accessible to those who wanted to maintain close supervision and rigorous control.
    If I mention the inquisitions at Jilava, pallid in comparison with those of Pitesti, but brutal and sadistic, it is only
    to show that a single intelligence planned and directed the use of prisoners to torture their fellow prisoners.
    Jilava was evidently a part of the experiment. [2]
    1)In the early 1950′s, many Romanians believed the propaganda put out from Washington! (Tr. )
    2)
    If we had more detailed information about the procedures at Jilava, its function in the experiment, as a
    “control group” or otherwise, might be clearer. (Tr. )
    CHAPTER XXX
    A LAST WORD
    Perhaps more will be written about what happened at Pitesti and at the other prisons, if the information ever
    penetrates the Iron Curtain. [1]
    The contents of this little book of mine aim only to direct the reader’s attention to a phenomenon too vast in its
    scope and application to permit the possibility of ascertainment of complete factual information (what is
    available from Communist prisons is very limited), and a definitive explanation of it in strictly psychological
    terms. In addition to the strict supervision of prison life, my observations were limited by the understandable
    embarrassment that the victims felt over many details of their experiences and conduct. Nor were they a few
    who simply refused to discuss at all the most painful sector of their lives.
    But fragmentary as they are, the contents of this book are true. Nobody can deny this, not even the “Communist
    authorities” at the helm of my country. I do not believe that a better account of these events can be found than
    the one given by the victims of the experiment themselves.
    It is possible that the “Party” may not take notice of this work, or it may institute a campaign of denial and
    slander against it, specifically by ordering those who were tortured to “indignantly deny the lies put out in the
    service of capitalism. ” If this proves to be the case, it will not be without many precedents. I shall cite one here,
    since it involves students, who, of all prisoners, suffered the most. This example comes from the experience of
    students in the so-called “free” life of a Romanian university in 1956.
    In those days, hope of liberation was less chimerical than it now is, and the West had not yet proved
    conclusively that it is completely disinterested in human freedom. In Hungary the students in Budapest joined
    forces with workers and, side by side with them, endeavored to break their chains; they succeeded in visibly
    shaking for a short time the rule of Satan. Their act had great repercussions in the universities of Romania,
    particularly at Timisoara, the closest to Hungary, and at Bucharest, where the student body was largest and the
    most agitated. A successful uprising in two colleges of Bucharest university (Letters and Medicine) was quickly
    put down by force through the power of the Securitate. But at Timisoara, events were more complicated.
    To begin with, the Minister of Education, Murgulescu, tried to reduce tensions there but to no avail. In fact, he
    only succeeded in stirring things up to such a pitch that, notwithstanding his high position, he was forced to flee
    through a window of the cafeteria under a bombardment of handfuls of mush thrown by irate students. As a
    result, the demonstration which the students had planned for four o’clock that afternoon was cancelled by the
    authorities, and several battalions of troops from the Securitate were sent in and stationed around the
    dormitories.
    In the evening, the Minister of the Interior himself arrived by plane and tried to pacify the students. He
    promised to meet all three of their demands, namely: elimination of Marxism and the Russian language as
    required subjects; liberalization of the whole university; and the dissolution of the cadre of students acting as
    spies for the Securitate. But after promising these things and getting the students quieted down and back to their
    rooms, he gave them the real answer: machine gun fire! For over two hours, in order to give the Securitate time
    to rush in reinforcements, the dormitory of the Medical College was kept under fire from automatic weapons.
    Then the assault was staged, with soldiers rushing into the building with arms at the ready. To oppose them the
    students had only their books and marmalade jars. For several hours, students were arrested and hauled away in
    trucks to an army camp unoccupied since the war, about 40 miles from Timisoara. Then for three days a
    vigorous search was conducted for students in the streets and homes of the city. Everyone whose card identified
    him as a student was arrested on the spot with no reason given, then hustled out to the camp. Not until the
    Hungarian uprising had been suppressed, however, were the arrested students given hearings. The majority
    were then freed provided they signed a declaration that they would never again participate in any action directed
    against the “Workers’ Party!” Several hundred were expelled from the university. In all this, social status
    obviously played no part at all, for the most rebellious of the students were those who came from poor families!
    Several score were considered “instigators of the rebellion against the legal social order” and spent some time in
    the cellars of the Securitate, then before the Tribunal, where sentences decreed by the Securitate were
    pronounced. The sentences varied in length from five years’ imprisonment to hard labor for life.
    By late December of 1956, when the situation had quieted down and the Communists felt secure of their
    victory, some strange “meetings” began to take place in various centers throughout the country. Under strict
    supervision by the Securitate, students vigorously protested “slanders in the capitalistic press,” which had
    reported, rather vaguely, some “unrest” on the campuses. Speeches, previously written and dictated by the
    Securitate, were “spontaneously” delivered from many rostra. These contained fulsome praise of the Party and
    the Soviet and affirmed the “unconditional attachment” of all students to the “working class in the People’s
    Romania”, expressing their deep indignation and their “pledges” of vigilance against the “enemy [sic] of the
    Romanian people. ” Such slop was poured out for days. The same students in whom, several weeks earlier, had
    been stirred a hope of liberation, now denied everything and professed loyalty to the regime.
    It is not unlikely that a similar denunciation of this book will be launched, and a comparable denial of its
    veracity manufactured by the same process.
    These lines have been written to fulfill a pledge I made to several victims of the unmaskings who, knowing that
    some day I would be able to smuggle the book through the Iron Curtain, had confided to me, frequently with
    pain and great inner anxiety, everything they thought it was man’s duty not to forget.
    More than just a record of these events, this book is a warning; it is a voice from beyond the grave, from the
    living dead behind the Iron Curtain. Let anyone draw conclusions according to his own heart.
    Lastly, I would like to say that while some died and some were obdurate, most of the victims recovered. Man
    has within himself certain powers that nobody can destroy — not even himself; for man does not belong to
    himself, and the powers within him proclaim Him Who created man.
    Bucharest, 1958
    Paris, 1962
    New York, 1970
    1)On the recent book by Dr. Carja, see the first footnote on p. x. — Editor.
    POSTSCRIPT
    Let not the reader imagine that there has been any change in the Beasts of the Apocalypse or any “mellowing”
    or “relaxation” of their sadism in Romania or any other country they have captured. In Romania, when the
    extraordinarily severe floods began in May, 1970, the Communist Ministry of the Interior ordered the directors
    and staffs of the prisons at Aiud and Gherla to abandon them after having locked the prisoners in their cells.
    How many Romanians were thus disposed of at Aiud has not been learned, but at Gherla 600 helpless men
    watched the waters slowly rise in their cells and were eventually drowned.
    INDEX
    – \ –
    1984 (George Orwell): …
    – A –
    Adrianople, Treaty of (1829): …
    Aiud: …
    Alexander II, Czar: …
    Alupoaei: …
    Americans: …
    American Opinion: …
    American Public Relations Forum: …
    Anagnostu, Iuliu: …
    Andreescu: …
    anti-humans: …
    anti-Semites: …
    Antonescu, General Ion: …
    Apuseni Mountains: …
    Archide: …
    Archangel: …
    ARLUS: …
    Arsenescu, Colonel: …
    Austria: …
    Avadanei, Lieutenant: …
    – B –
    Babel ou le vertige technique (G. Thibau): …
    Bacau: …
    Bacau Region: …
    Back Door to War (Charles Callan Tansill): …
    Bacu, D. : …
    Baia Sprie: …
    Balan, Gheorghe: …
    Balkans: …
    Ball: …
    Banat Region: …
    Baragan: …
    Barbosu, Dr. : …
    Barefoot (Zaharia Stancu): …
    Bârlad: …
    Barracks No. 13 & 14: …
    Baruch, Bernard: …
    Baschioi: …
    Bavaria: …
    Beria, Lavrentiy: …
    Bessarabia: …
    La Bête sans nom … (Michel Sturdza): …
    Bicaz: …
    Bihor Region: …
    Bismarck, Otto E. L. von: …
    Bodnarenco (alias Emil Bodnaras): …
    Bogdanescu: …
    Bogdanovici: …
    Bolfosu, Eugen: …
    Bolsheviks: …
    Boncescu, Gheorghe: …
    Borila, General Petre: …
    Botea, Lieutenant: …
    Botosani Region: …
    Brain-washing, a Synthesis … (Kenneth Goff): …
    Brainwashing (Edward Hunter): …
    Brasov-Codlea: …
    Bratianu, Dinu: …
    Bratianu, George: …
    Brittany: …
    Britton, Frank: …
    Brotherhood of the Cross (F. d. C. ): …
    Bucharest: …
    Buchs: …
    Bucoveanu, Ion: …
    Budapest: …
    Bulgaria: …
    Butler, Eric D. : …
    Byron, Lord: …
    – C –
    Calciu, Gheorghe: …
    Camilar, Eusebiu: …
    Câmpeanu, Colonel: …
    Câmpu-Lungul, Moldavia: …
    Camus, Albert: …
    Cantemir: …
    Caranica, Gheorghe: …
    Caravia: …
    Cârja, Dr. Ion: …
    Carol II, King: …
    Cavnic: …
    cazinca: …
    The Center for Student Re-education: …
    Cernauti: …
    Cerna-Voda: …
    Charles, Prince (later King Carol I): …
    China: …
    Chisinevski, Josef: …
    Ciobanu, prison guard: …
    Climescu: …
    Cluj: …
    Coifan, Coriolan: …
    Cojocaru: …
    Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea: …
    Codreanu et la Garde de Fer (Paul Guiraud): …
    Cohen, Israel (alias Bela Kun): …
    Comte, Auguste: …
    Constanta: …
    Constantin, Puiu: …
    Corneliu Codreanu, prezent (various authors): …
    Corneliu Z. Codreanu in perspectiva a douazeci de ani (various authors): …
    Cosmici, Colonel: …
    Costachescu: …
    Craciunas, Colonel: …
    Craciunescu: …
    Cristo-Loveanu, Professor Miron: …
    Cronologie Legionara: …
    Cuba: …
    Cucole, Gheorghe: …
    Cucu, prison guard: …
    Cuza, Professor Alexandru C. : …
    Cuza, Prince Alexander (later Cuza-Voda): …
    Cuzist Party: …
    Czecho-Slovakia: …
    – D –
    Dacia: …
    Dacians: …
    Dall, Colonel Curtis B. : …
    Damocles: …
    Danila: …
    Danube-Black Sea Canal: …
    Destroy the Accuser (Frederick Seelig): …
    Diaca: …
    Djugashvili (alias Stalin): …
    Dobrogea: …
    Dorneanu: …
    Draghici, Alexandru: …
    Dullberger (alias Dulgheru): …
    Dumitrescu, Lieutenant: …
    Duta: …
    – E –
    Einstein, Albert: …
    elev: …
    Ellul, Jacques: …
    Eminescu, Mihail: …
    Enachescu: …
    Englishmen: …
    L’Envoye de l’Archange (Jerome and Jean Tharaud): …
    Der erzwungene Krieg (David L. Hoggan): …
    Esquisse d’une theorie des opinions (Jean Stoetzel): …
    Europe: …
    evrei: …
    – F –
    Fagaras: …
    Fagaras Mountains: …
    Fagaras Prison: …
    Facing the Truth (Vasile Iasinschi): …
    Fascists: …
    Father Joseph: …
    F. d. C. (Brotherhood of the Cross): …
    F. D. R. (Curtis B. Dall): …
    Federal Reserve System: …
    Fischer: …
    Florescu: …
    Fleuras: …
    France: …
    France, Anatole: …
    Franklin, Benjamin: …
    – G –
    Gafencu: …
    Gal: …
    Galati: …
    Garda Constiintei Nationale: …
    Garda de Fier: …
    Gavenescul, Professor Ion: …
    Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche): …
    Georgescu, Lieutenant: …
    Georgescu, Sergeant: …
    Georgescu, Teohari (Burah Tescovici): …
    Germans: …
    Germany: …
    Gheorghiu, Captain, director of Gherla Prison: …
    Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe: …
    Gherla Prison: …
    Glodeanu, Inocentiu: …
    Goff, Reverend Kenneth: …
    Goga, Octavian: …
    Goiciu, Captain Petre, director of Gherla Prison: …
    Grama brothers: …
    Granovsky, Anatoli: …
    Great Britain: …
    Great Powers: …
    Greece: …
    Guard of the National Conscience: …
    Guiraud, Paul: …
    gugustiuci: …
    – H –
    Heine, Heinrich: …
    Hentes: …
    History of the Byzantine Empire (Nicolae Iorga): …
    History of Romania (Nicolae Iorga): …
    Hitler, Adolf: …
    Hoggan, Professor David L… .
    Hospital Room Four: …
    Hosu: …
    Hunedoara Prison: …
    Hungarian Uprising: …
    Hungary: …
    Hunter, Edward: …
    – I –
    I Was an NKVD Agent (Anatoli Granovsky): …
    Iasi: …
    Iasi County: …
    Iasinschi, Vasile: …
    Imperativul momentului istoric (Ion Gavenescul): …
    India: …
    International Brigade: …
    International Conspiracy: …
    Întoarcerea din Infern: amintirile … (Ion Cârja): …
    Ionescu, Virgil: …
    Iorga, Prof. Nicolae: …
    Iron Curtain: …
    Iron Guard: …
    Israel: …
    – J –
    Jew: …
    Jewish Revolution: …
    Jianu: …
    Jilava Prison: …
    John Birch Society: …
    Juberian, Constantin: …
    Judaism: …
    Judea: …
    Jurilofca: …
    – K –
    Khruschev, Nikita: …
    Kirion: …
    Knupffer, George: …
    Kremlin: …
    Kun, Bela (alias Israel Cohen): …
    – L –
    Laitin: …
    Landowsky, J. : …
    Lazar, Captain: …
    Legion of Michael the Archangel: …
    Legionaries: …
    Legionary Movement: …
    Legiunea Archangelului Mihail: …
    “Legiunea si L. A. N. C. ” (Ion Mota): …
    Lenin, Nikolay (Ulyanov, Vladimir Ilich): …
    Lenin University: …
    Leonida, Titus: …
    Leopardi, Giacomo: …
    Levinschi: …
    Liberal Dissident Party: …
    Liberal Party: …
    liceu: …
    Liga Apararii Nationale Crestine: …
    Limberea, Paul: …
    Lugoj Prison: …
    Lupascu: …
    Lupescu, Magda (alias Magda Wolff): …
    – M –
    Macedonia: …
    Macedonians: …
    Magirescu, Captain: …
    Magirescu, Eugen: …
    Makarenko, Anton Semenovich: …
    Malmaison Prison: …
    Mandinescu, Sergiu: …
    Mândruta, prison guard: …
    Maniu, Iuliu: …
    Manoilescu, Professor Mihai: …
    Maromet, director of Jilava Prison: …
    Marshall, Louis: …
    Martinus: …
    Marxism: …
    Mateias: …
    Matusu, Nicolae: …
    McCabe, Joseph: …
    mental health: …
    Messaros, political officer at Gherla Prison: …
    Mihai (Michael), King: …
    Mihai-Viteazul village: …
    Mihailov, Lenin: …
    Mihalcea, Lieutenant: …
    Military Tribunal of Bucharest: …
    Milwaukee, Wisconsin: …
    Ministry of the Interior: …
    The Mist (Eusebiu Camilar): …
    Moldavia: …
    Moldavian Region: …
    Moldavian Republic: …
    Molotov, Viachislav Mikhailovich (Scryabin): …
    Morarescu: …
    Moscovici, Ilie: …
    Moscovites: …
    Moscow: …
    Moslems: …
    Mota, Ion: …
    Munich: …
    Munteanu, Eugen: …
    Muntenia (Wallachia): …
    Murfatlar: …
    Murgulescu: …
    – N –
    N., Petre: …
    Napoleon Bonaparte: …
    National Peasant Party: …
    Navodari: …
    Nazis: …
    New Times: …
    Nicholas II, Czar: …
    Nicolschi, General: …
    Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm: …
    Niki: …
    – O –
    Obreja, Spiru: …
    Ocnele-Mari Prison: …
    Oliver, Professor Revilo P. : …
    Oltenia: …
    Onac: …
    Opris: …
    Oprisan, Constantin: …
    Organization of Detainees of Communist Convictions (O. D. C. C. ): …
    The Origins of the Second World War (A. J. P. Taylor): …
    Orwell, George: …
    Outer Mongolia: …
    – P –
    Pancu, Constantin: …
    Papahagi: …
    Papanace, Atanase: …
    Paris: …
    Paris, Peace Treaty of (1856): …
    Parliament, Romanian: …
    Pascu: …
    Patrascanu, Nuti: …
    Pauker, Ana (alias Rabinovich): …
    Pavlov, Dr. Ivan Petrovich: …
    Pegler, Westbrook: …
    Peninsula Labor Colony: …
    Pennsylvania: …
    The Pentagon Case (Robert A. Winston): …
    Petrescu, General Alexandru, military judge: …
    Piedmont: …
    Pirinei: …
    Pitea: …
    Pitesti Prison: …
    Pitigoi: …
    Ploesti: …
    Poarta Alba: …
    politruks: …
    Pompilian: …
    Pop, Cornel: …
    Pop, Gheorghe: …
    Popa, Alexandru: …
    Popescu: …
    Popescu, Florin: …
    Predeal: …
    Principalities, Romanian: …
    Prisacaru: …
    Propagandes (Jacques Ellul): …
    psychological warfare: …
    psychopolitics: …
    Public Opinion: …
    – R –
    Rabinovich, Ana (alias Pauker): …
    Radauti: …
    Rahova Road: …
    The Rebel (Albert Camus): …
    Reck, Ludovic: …
    Red Symphony (J. Landowsky): …
    Reds in America (R. M. Whitney): …
    Renan, Ernest: …
    Richelieu, Cardinal: …
    A Ride to Panmunjon (Duane Thorin): …
    Rodas: …
    Roman, Bubi: …
    Romans: …
    Roman Empire: …
    România si sfârsitul Europei … (Michel Sturdza): …
    Romanian People’s Republic: …
    Rome: …
    Room 99: …
    Roosevelt, Franklin D. : …
    Roosevelt, Theodore: …
    – S –
    Sade, Donatien Alphonse, ‘Marquise de’: …
    Schiffs: …
    Schopenhauer, Arthur: …
    Scryabin (alias Molotov): …
    Sebesteny, political officer: …
    Secu, Serban: …
    Seelig, Frederick: …
    Seneca, Lucius Annaeus: …
    Serban, Gheorghe: …
    Sikorsky, General: …
    Simionescu, student: …
    Simionescu, Dr. : …
    Sinfonía en rojo mayor (J. Landowsky): …
    Siut-Ghiol lake: …
    Sokoloff, Dr. Boris: …
    Solomon: …
    Somes River: …
    The Soviet Inferno (Louis Zoul): …
    Soviet Union (Russia): …
    Sovroms (Soviet-Romanian exploitation companies): …
    Spain: …
    Springfield, Missouri: …
    Saint Nicholas’ Day: …
    Stalin, Joseph V. (Djugashvili): …
    Stancu, Zaharia: …
    Stickley, Professor Charles: …
    Stoetzel, Jean: …
    Stoicanescu: …
    student: …
    Sturdza, Prince Michel (Mihai): …
    Suceava Prison: …
    Suciu, Silviu: …
    Suicide of Europe (Michel Sturdza): …
    Supreme Court: …
    – T –
    Talmud: …
    Tanase, Alexandru: …
    Tancabesti: …
    Tansill, Professor Charles Callan: …
    Targu-Mures: …
    Targu-Ocna: …
    Taylor, Professor A. J. P. : …
    Teodoru: …
    terci: …
    Tescovici, Burah (alias Teohari Georgescu): …
    Tharaud, Jerome and Jean: …
    Thibau, G. : …
    Thorin, Duane: …
    Thugs and Communists (Louis Zoul): …
    Timisoara: …
    Tomuta, Octavian: …
    Transcaucasia: …
    Transylvania: …
    Trevor-Roper, H. R. : …
    troite: …
    Tudose: …
    Tulcea County: …
    Turcanu, Eugen: …
    Turkey: …
    Turkish Rule: …
    Turkish Sultan: …
    Turks: …
    Turnu-Severin: …
    Tutea, Petre: …
    – U –
    Ulyanov, Vladimir Ilich (alias Lenin): …
    United Nations: …
    United States: …
    – V –
    Valea-Neagra: …
    Valea Nistrului: …
    Victorian League of Rights: …
    Victoriei Street: …
    Vojen: …
    – W –
    Walker, General Edwin A. : …
    Wallachia (Muntenia): …
    Wall Street: …
    Warburgs: …
    Washington, D. C. : …
    Weizmann Laboratories: …
    The White Nights (Boris Sokoloff): …
    Whitney, R. M. : …
    Wilson, Woodrow: …
    Winston, Captain Robert A. : …
    Wolff, Magda (alias Magda Lupescu), consort of King Carol: …
    World Festival of Democratic Youth: …
    World War I: …
    World War II: …
    Wright brothers: …
    – Y –
    Yezhov: …
    – Z –
    Zeller, Colonel: …
    Zionists: …
    Zoul, Louis: …

  9. On December 16, 2010 at 10:11 am hoff2 said:

    http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/AntiHumans.pdf

  10. On December 16, 2010 at 11:09 am Tweets that mention The Anti-Humans « Hoff -- Topsy.com said:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by 911= Zionistjob, Jew Watch. Jew Watch said: The Anti-Humans: Will be text http://bit.ly/eZ9S5B #jews #zionism [...]


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